We are the 99%
Trends and focus in the golf industry are swinging back to the amateur
BY ALAN SHIPNUCK G
olf has always been unique among sports in that recre- ational players are held in thrall
by the pros. Baseball and football may be our national pastimes but very few among us attempt to play these sports as adults. The lunchtime ballers at your local YMCA might occasionally try to mimic one of LeBron’s post-move jumpers, but if they don’t blow out an Achilles these lumpy, ground-bound dreamers are otherwise content to play their usual game. But we golfers obsess about the pros. We want to play the same equipment on the same courses, wearing the same clothes. We study their swings and try to reproduce the same numbers on the launch moni- tors they helped popularize. When we’re not studying their wives’ Insta- grams (bless you, @aduf99) we’re busy ordering the same beef jerky they eat (Kingmade) or poring over the books they swear by (“Golf Is Not A Game
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NCGA.ORG / SPRING 2014
Tour Pros 1%
of Perfect”; the King James bible). All of this makes the fan experience richer, but there is a dark side to golf ’s cult of personality: many of the game’s most intractable problems have trickled down from the pros. The copying of their OCD pre-
shot routines and exotic dance steps on the greens has contributed to the scourge that is slow play. The overly long and extreme courses built to challenge the pros are too diffi cult for everyday golfers and too expensive to maintain. The guys on Tour love to peddle the notion that golf is supposed to be hard—it makes them feel better about their 76s and 77s—but this macho ethos has scared away beginners and endangered the sport at the recre- ational level. According to the Nation-
underway in the golf world. Instead of catering to the top 1% of elite play- ers, the sport is beginning to focus on the struggling 99%. A number of new initiatives are trying to divorce us from the pro game. The USGA and PGA of America have implored us to “Tee it Forward.” So, instead of getting your teeth kicked in on a long golf course, à la the U.S. Open, many hackers have learned to enjoy the charms of the white tees, from which a round is less penal and a lot more fun. The USGA’s “While We’re Young” campaign has convinced some weekend warriors that they don’t have to grind like a dour Jim Furyk, and that a faster round of golf is also more enjoyable. Course opera- tors are grudgingly accepting that they are not, in fact, the next Oakmont, and slightly slower greens, wider fairways and less rough have made the game more user-friendly. (The newly redesigned Poppy Hills features no rough at all.) Recognizing that many us are more squeezed than ever for time, the very notion of what consti- tutes a round of golf is under review. Jack Nicklaus—who, it must be said, has made a fortune building punish- ing courses that can take all day to navigate—has been championing nine- hole rounds. Some courses are being even more creative. Island Hills Golf
Recognizing that many us are more squeezed than ever for time, the very notion of what constitutes a round of golf is under review.
al Golf Foundation, we have lost fi ve million golfers in the last decade. The number of core golfers (defi nition: at least eight rounds a year) has declined by 25% and the future doesn’t look any rosier, given that 18- to 34-year-olds comprise only 11% of all golfers, down from 18% years ago. “The research tells us the answer is very simple,” NGF CEO Joe Beditz recently told Golf World. “They’re just not having fun.” Given this crisis, a radical new shift is
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