Numbers are off from the record 30 million that played the game before 2008. Yes, golf took a severe nosedive, but so did the economy. Since then golf has been making a small, slow but steady recovery. Let's not pronounce the patient dead yet, who yes is in intensive care but not on life support. We can fix this with some sound changes and good business sense. Let's look at this from the perspective of the glass being half full, not half empty.
Here is a comment I read this morning on my FaceBook page taken form a group I belong to. The group is "Old School Golf-New Tools", and was written by Judge Tinker who is the page moderator. It caught my eye and has some great thoughts and ideas in it. Here it is, let me know what you think.
Oh no! We have fewer people playing the game of golf today. Golf associations and bloggers are always talking about golfers that have quit playing the game. "We're down 3-million golfers," they say.
Any math whiz can figure out that number is peanuts as a percentage compared to the 26-million golfers still playing the game.
I certainly don't want to appear to be a naysayer, so I'll play along and I'll buy into the theory that the sky is falling in golf to support those people that are trying to increase golf participation.
But in reality, I must question a few things in order to convince myself that the golf sky is actually falling.
It is no secret that it takes money to play the game of golf. Do these bloggers truly know the income brackets of the people that have allegedly quit playing the game of golf?
If a person lost his job, or took a pay cut, I assume the first thing he would do to save money is quit playing golf to save money.
It doesn't take a scientist to figure out that golf participation is going decline for twenty-years as the baby boom generation grows in age.
We all should get used to this fact. It's not fun to play golf when you lose your flexibility. Both job losses and aging retirees will affect the number of people playing the sport. Ok, let's except it and roll on.
IMO--It's just not the golfing world, this group of people will not be buying stocks, buying new cars or buying new homes either.
A recent survey said that the average person playing golf has a 92,000 household income and a person belonging to a private club has a $127,000 household income. The last time I checked, social security payments are not in that range.
Most of us know we have fewer courses today then we had decades ago, and we expect fewer for the upcoming decades.
For those people that see the glass as half full, saying the courses are always full when I play golf, do we ever ask ourselves how do we really know people have quit playing the game?
Consider, there is no accurate reporting system that registers the number of rounds that are purchased each year. There is no reporting system where private clubs report their membership levels. There is no association where a person needs to call and register that he is quitting the game of golf.
The only reporting system is the total number of people that track their handicap scores. So, how can bloggers truly say that people are not playing the game just because they quit tracking their handicap scores?
Another thing that is tracked, fan participation, and watching golfing events is up ~~ way up.
Shouldn't bloggers be saying that we should be concerned about the number of golfers that have discontinued paying the annual association fees that track handicap scores?
Wouldn't this be more reality?
Thank you Judge for that insight. No, the sky is not falling. A piece of the ceiling may have fallen down, but the sky has not fallen. Judge's article couldn't have put things more into perspective. The game is sound after hitting a bump in the road but it is coming back little by little. However, this doesn't mean that we stop work on growing the game. Our efforts have to continue and strengthen in their resolve. Just remember, golf is for everyone.
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| Ah, the beauty of it all. |
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