When the Gaillardia Golf and Country Club opened in 1998, it was to be the crown jewel of golf in Oklahoma City, complete with an 18-hole PGA championship course and a 55,000-square-foot clubhouse of Norman-style architecture. The Gaylord family, best known as Oklahoma media moguls and owners of the Grand Ole Opry, sank a reported $59 million into the project.

Over the next 15 years, however, the course changed hands and fell into disrepair as a glut of new courses and declining demand punished the market. Finally, early this year, Gaillardia was sold to Concert Golf Partners, an investment firm based in Newport Beach, California, which assumed $7 million in loans and now owns the property free and clear.

“Between 1998 and 2005 there would have been a bidding war,” said Peter Nanula, the chairman of Concert Golf who previously ran Arnold Palmer Golf Management.

While golf is still anathema to many investment portfolios, investors who have the cash see the current market as an opportunity to scoop up distressed clubs and revamp their business models.

“It’s certainly a buyer’s market,” said Larry Hirsh, president of Golf Property Analysts. “There are a lot of distressed courses, financing is difficult and most buyers don’t have the ability to write a check.”

Valuations for golf courses — and golf course debt — have been slow to recover even as most asset classes have recovered from the financial crisis. Last year was the eighth consecutive year of net club closings, according to the National Golf Foundation, with 157 closings and 14 openings. Most existing courses, meanwhile, are still worth far less than they were before the recession.

Several factors have been dragging down the industry, experts say, including changing family dynamics, overbuilding in the late 1990s and an absence of lenders. (And while plenty of baby boomers still love to golf, said Douglas Main, a real estate consultant, many are working longer, traveling more and taking up other leisure activities.)

“It would be like if Wells Fargo and Chase suddenly quit making home loans,” Nanula said, noting that lenders left the market for a variety of reasons, not all of them related to loan performance.

But that has opened the door for investors like Nanula, who raised his $50 million private equity fund in 2012 and has since bought eight golf course clubs and loans. Foreign investors are also joining the game.

More golf courses are likely to close over the next couple of years, said Eric Affeldt, ClubCorp’s chief executive, but for the right clubs in the right markets, the tide is turning. “We sold more memberships last year than at any time over the last 10 years,” he said. “As capacity returns to a healthier level, things should only improve.”