Why aren't young people playing more golf?

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.