Courtesy: Pala Casino
It’s a hilarious TV commercial. E-Trader Baby and golf partner Frank are in the locker room. Baby ridicules Frank’s game: “It’s weak, man!” Frank gets defensive. Baby gets frustrated. Baby calls out Frank: “Shankapotomus!”
What might Baby say about the Institution of Golf? The hallowed institution is struggling to learn a new stance.
Bill Pennington (The New York Times (5/18/14) reports that the game has lost 5 million players over the last decade. And The Golf Foundation estimates about 1 in 5 golfers (another 5 million) will drop the game over the next few years. That’s huge! There are slightly fewer than 30 million golfers to start with.
The Foundation also estimates that about 5-10% of courses will close in the next decade; and course rounds on public courses are down, on average, about 20% per course (“Future of Public Golf in America”).
Although there have been up-blips in the volume of play (for 2012, for example) the long-term prospects aren’t good. Golf doesn’t have strong appeal with young adults. Many say it costs too much, takes too long to play, and is too difficult to master.
“Shank Happens.”
Courtesy: Tomsworkbench.com
The Golf establishment is worried…and rightfully so. Trends are in the wrong direction and that gives Golf a high handicap. What’s going on? What can be done?
One challenge is to better align an historic game with contemporary values, styles, and preferences. At issue is how. To help Golf is crowdsourcing—soliciting ideas from a broad swath of folks, the golfing public in this case.
Go to http://www.hackgolf.org/hackathons/golf/orientation. You’re invited to suggest ways to reduce Golf’s “frustration factors,” aspects that make the game “less fun than it should be.” To date about 1500 ideas have been proposed, organized in ten categories, such as playing the round, choosing equipment and clothing, and getting better at the game.
Serious consideration is being given to changing the game: increasing the cup size, shortening yardage from tee-to-green, and reducing the number of holes in a round. At issue is whether the character of the game would be altered by these changes. It’s possible to cross a line: making it too easy for less skillful golfers to achieve significantly positive results. That can trivialize a grand game.
It is a grand game—and a regal game at that. It’s played at a slow pace in pristine environments. You leave the world’s craziness … for a few hours, at least. And it’s a game you can play for life. You play it with acquaintances, too—new and continuing, business and personal—establishing and renewing friendships on the links, at the 19th Hole, and beyond.
Courtesy: USA Today
I started playing as a kid and couldn’t wait to introduce the game to our son, Frank Jr. He started playing at 3, worked as a youth at local courses on just about every job there, and played high school and college golf. His friendship networks still revolve around the game. Today, Frank and I belong to the same club. Together we’re introducing the next generation of Fear’s—his children—to the game.
Golf wouldn’t be in trouble if there were more stories like ours. Well…not really…. There’s more to our story, much more. Frank Jr. and I are White, highly educated, affluent professionals. We can “afford” to play—financially, occupationally, and socio-culturally. Our story, you see, aligns well with Golf’s primary narrative: It’s a White Gentlemen’s game.
The iconic setting for that narrative is the Country Club. Just about everybody who is anybody has belonged to private clubs since the ‘20s. Members generally look alike and—in many ways—are alike. Many clubs have only a smattering of women (almost all of whom are “the other half” of member couples), and some clubs don’t have many (or any) minority members. That outcome isn’t always by design, especially for potential members who didn’t play Golf as a youth or don’t have many adult friends who play.
Exclusivity is also seen in the ranks of Professional Golf, an enterprise populated historically and predominantly by Whites—many of whom come through the Country Club ranks. The Professional Golfers Association wasn’t desegregated until the 1960s but, then again, neither was college basketball. African-American players dominate the college game today, but not Professional Golf. There are very few African-American players—even caddies—on the professional tours.
Despite serious efforts to diversify the game (1st Tee Program for youth)—and even with Tiger Wood’s impact—Golf remains predominantly White. In 2013 The Golf Foundation reported that about 80% of America’s golfers are White and 5% are Black (12% are Latino and 4% are Asian). “Where are all the black golfers?” asked Michael Bamberger in a feature article appearing in Golf Magazine (7/13).
Courtesy: Jasonackerman.org
Those two challenges—aligning the game with contemporary lifestyles and diversifying the Golfing public—are major hurdles. Golf’s stewards need vision—a lot of it—to address what ails Golf.
I like what NBC icon Tom Brokaw has to say about tackling big challenges. He says it boils down to four things: imagination, new voices, more outside looking inside, and bold choices (from Politico, 4/21/14). Golf needs all those things, and it needs them now.
Here’s one example: professional team golf. Every major sport in America is played with teams representing major cities. Not so in golf: we follow individuals. What if we converted the PGA and LPGA tours (in part) from individual to team competition? Think about it: fans talking about their teams (here and abroad), going to see their teams play, and buying team products. I suspect that pride in place would draw new fans to the game, not just to watch it, but to play it, too.
Golf needs visionaries no matter where it ends up. Consider what the late Dave Gavitt did for Eastern college basketball. in the 1980s Gavitt converted a disjointed expanse of teams into a focused, formidable national power, “The Big East.” Or take Harry Gordon Selfridge, an American living in Great Britain in the early 20th Century. He transformed the department store concept by taking a strongly positioned “the customer comes first” approach. Selfridge turned a previously nondescript affair into a magnetic social experience.
These men shared three attributes. Each “saw things” others did not; each was action-oriented and moved quickly; and each honored tradition while ushering in the future. “It”—the outcome of their visioning—was waiting to be discovered, the timing was just right.
New energies were released. People got excited. They engaged.
That’s what Golf needs. Without “it” Golf will hack down the fairway—a Shankapotomus—its true potential untapped.
It doesn’t need to be that way. And let’s hope it’s not.
ENDNOTE: To Avery, Eli, and Vivia—the 4th Generation of Golfing Fear’s—inheritors of Golf’s future.
