Golf: Anyone Can Play, But Fewer Aspire To
By: Terry Donnelly
Let's Talk Nevada Blog
January, 20015
“If most people held a knife and fork the way they hold a
golf club, they’d starve.” That was Sam Snead, one of the best golfers during
the 1940s and 50s commenting about amateur golfers,
Golf is a hard game and one that takes constant monitoring
and tinkering to keep in top form. It is not overly physically demanding and
therein lays both the draw and the pushback of the game.
When one is older, out of the business world, not
particularly interested in spending leisure hours at the gym, and looking to
spend time with friends; golf is appealing.
When one is a modern day youngster the allure of golf is
contrary to almost every fiber in your body. If someone does not introduce kids
to the game, they likely will not take it up on their own. The other avenue in
which kids historically got started in golf was through the now mostly defunct caddy
program. Powered golf carts have replaced kids hauling bags around the courses.
Through the 1970s kids would go out to the local golf course and wait at the
caddy shack for a bag to tote to earn money. The job gave them an up-close look
at the game and caddy day, often Mondays, got them out on the links for free.
Today caddies have all but disappeared from all but the professional game and
the exclusive country clubs. And, those caddies are mostly grown men doing the
job as a profession. The once prevalent Eisenhower-Evans college scholarship
fund for caddies is still available, but much less used than previous years.
The bottom line is that unless a kid has a strong family tie
to the game or just happens to wander onto a golf course, it is unlikely he or
she will stick with the game.
Randy Tichner, director of golf at the Oasis Golf Cub in
Mesquite, Nevada, states, “We get 60 or 70 kids every summer for our youth golf
program, but they don’t come back. We only see about 10 return the next
summer.”
Adam Schwartz, golf professional at the Oasis, says that the
majority of his beginner lessons stem from recently retired people with newly
gained freedom from the weekly work grind. The popularity of golf with the
younger set seems to be at a pretty deep nadir these days.
Golf just seems too pastoral to appeal to the fast paced
world of today’s youth. I’ve taken my grandkids out to play and learn. They
love our time together going out to Denver, Colorado’s fine First Tee facility
and revel in their few great shots, but they are not driven to pursue the game
when I’m not there. Their bustling lives do not play into learning an
intricate, subtle game that takes quiet, extended hours, additional time to
travel to and from a facility, and little technology to master.
There has been extended talk of ways to jazz up golf, make
it faster paced, more aerobic, and exciting. Some want to trim the rules
(lifelong players often do not know all the rules of the game) and make golf
more freewheeling like an individually staged game of polo, sans horses.
Suggestions for making the game easier by playing shorter distances and with a
bigger target (hole) are on the table. Even the possibility of redesigning
currently troubled courses and eschewing clubs so that the game can be played
by maneuvering a soccer-like ball around the course and into a sewer-like hole
have been kicked around. With a tradition-laden game like golf, the
fundamentalists just cringe. The
game has been basically the same since Mary, Queen of Scots, played in the
early 1500s. Sweeping changes are not likely.
The problem isn’t just one of popularity. Like most other
enterprises, economics is a huge factor. First, demand has abated and the
number of courses built to try to meet a seemingly endless demand that was
flourishing as little as 15 years ago, are struggling. Courses were built like
crazy over the last 40 years–some 2,000 in the United States. The economic
reality is the same as any other business; when availability overtakes demand
the industry suffers. We are at that point. An industry seen as failing does
not exhibit the vitality needed to draw greater crowds.
Another reason for fewer rounds each year is an extension of
that same economic supply and demand theory–the pool of possible participants
has shrunk. Golf has traditionally been a Country Club game, thought to be best
fitted to the wealthy population. In good times, the middle class can get on
board and afford the time and money to play. Today, there is still a sizeable cache
of rich people and they still play golf. The professional golf tour is on solid
ground with advertising and production aimed at those upper crust customers.
The problem is that they tend to be the older population who
has always played. Today, no new golfers are coming out of the middle class,
mainly because there isn’t much of a middle class left. I am a product of that
golfing reality. I am a thoroughly middle class citizen who learned to play at
age eight with the assistance of my middle class father during the 1950s, the
economic heyday of said American middle class. A twenty-first century fact is
that middle economic families have been all but eliminated by the huge income
and wealth gap we are experiencing in our society. We all know about the upper
one percent and the amount of wealth they own and that the upper 10% own 80% of
financial wealth compared with the working poor and their struggle for basic
needs. The lower end of the wealth scale is larger than ever and those folks
have neither the time nor the resources to play golf–they never have.
With a much smaller, poorer middle class and the stagnant number
of rich, newcomers to golf, especially the young, have become a rare breed. If
there is no resurgence of youth into the game, the industry will surely
continue to falter and ultimately become out of touch with mainstream leisure
activities. This is not good news to communities, like Mesquite, that have
hitched a large chunk of their prosperity wagon to the royal and ancient game.
