Be sure
to read the last four paragraphs of this article!
More Americans Are
Giving Up Golf
By PAUL VITELLO
FEB. 21, 2008
HAUPPAUGE,
N.Y. ― The men gathered in a new golf clubhouse
here a couple of weeks ago circled the problem from every angle, like caddies
lining up a shot out of the rough.
"We
have to change our mentality," said Richard Rocchio,
a public relations consultant.
"The
problem is time," offered Walter Hurney, a real
estate developer. "There just isn't enough time. Men won't spend a whole
day away from their family anymore."
William
A. Gatz, owner of the Long Island National Golf Club
in Riverhead, said the problem was fundamental economics: too much supply, not
enough demand.
The
problem was not a game of golf. It was the game of golf itself.
Over
the past decade, the leisure activity most closely associated with corporate
success in America has been in a kind of recession.
The
total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since
2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National
Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.
More
troubling to golf boosters, the number of people who play 25 times a year or
more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a loss of about a
third.
The
industry now counts its core players as those who golf eight or more times a
year. That number, too, has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from
17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation.
The
five men who met here at the Wind Watch Golf Club a couple of weeks ago, golf
aficionados all, wondered out loud about the reasons. Was it the economy?
Changing family dynamics? A glut of golf courses? A
surfeit of etiquette rules ― like not letting people use their cellphones for the four hours it typically takes to play a
round of 18 holes?
Or
was it just the four hours?
Here
on Long Island, where there are more than 100 private courses, golf course
owners have tried various strategies: coupons and trial memberships, aggressive
marketing for corporate and charity tournaments, and even some forays into the
wedding business.
Over
coffee with a representative of the National Golf Course Owners Association,
the owners of four golf courses discussed forming an owners' cooperative to
market golf on Long Island and, perhaps, to purchase staples like golf carts
and fertilizer more cheaply.
They
strategized about marketing to women, who make up
about 25 percent of golfers nationally; recruiting young players with a high
school tournament; attracting families with special rates; realigning courses
to 6-hole rounds, instead of 9 or 18; and seeking tax breaks, on the premise
that golf courses, even private ones, provide publicly beneficial open space.
"When
the ship is sinking, it's time to get creative," said Mr. Hurney, a principal owner of the Great Rock Golf Club in
Wading River, which last summer erected a 4,000-square-foot tent for social
events, including weddings, christenings and communions.
The
disappearance of golfers over the past several years is part of a broader
decline in outdoor activities ― including tennis, swimming, hiking,
biking and downhill skiing ― according to a number of academic and
recreation industry studies.
A
2006 study by the United
States Tennis Association,
which has battled the trend somewhat successfully with a forceful campaign to
recruit young players, found that punishing hurricane seasons factored into the
decline of play in the South, while the soaring popularity of electronic games
and newer sports like skateboarding was diminishing the number of new tennis
players everywhere.
Rodney
B. Warnick, a professor of recreation studies and
tourism at the University
of Massachusetts,
said that the aging population of the United States was probably a part of the
problem, too, and that "there is a younger generation that is just not as
active."
But
golf, a sport of long-term investors ― both those who buy the expensive
equipment and those who build the princely estates on which it is played ―
has always seemed to exist in a world above the fray of shifting demographics.
Not anymore.
Jim
Kass, the research director of the National Golf
Foundation, an industry group, said the gradual but prolonged slump in golf has
defied the adage, "Once a golfer, always a
golfer." About three million golfers quit playing each year,
and slightly fewer than that have been picking it up. A two-year campaign by
the foundation to bring new players into the game, he said, "hasn't shown
much in the way of results."
"The
man in the street will tell you that golf is booming because he sees Tiger
Woods
on TV," Mr. Kass said. "But we track the
reality. The reality is, while we haven't exactly tanked, the numbers have been
disappointing for some time."
Surveys
sponsored by the foundation have asked players what keeps them away. "The
answer is usually economic," Mr. Kass said.
"No time. Two jobs. Real wages
not going up. Pensions going away. Corporate
cutbacks in country club memberships ― all that
doom and gloom stuff."
In
many parts of the country, high expectations for a golf bonanza paralleling
baby boomer retirements led to what is now considered a vast overbuilding of golf
courses.
Between 1990 and 2003, developers built more than 3,000 new golf courses in the United States, bringing the total to about 16,000. Several hundred have closed in the last few years, most of them in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and South Carolina, according to the foundation.
(Scores more courses are listed for sale on the Web site of the National Golf Course Owners Association, which lists, for example, a North Carolina property described as "two 18-hole championship courses, great mountain locations, profitable, $1.5 million revenues, Bermuda fairways, bent grass, nice clubhouses, one at $5.5 million, other at $2.5 million ― possible some owner financing.")
At
the meeting here, there was a consensus that changing family dynamics have had
a profound effect on the sport.
"Years
ago, men thought nothing of spending the whole day playing golf ― maybe
Saturday and Sunday both," said Mr. Rocchio, the
public relations consultant, who is also the New York regional director of the
National Golf Course Owners Association. "Today, he is driving his kids to
their soccer games. Maybe he's playing a round early in the morning. But he has
to get back home in time for lunch."
Mr.
Hurney, the real estate developer, chimed in,
"Which is why if we don't repackage our facilities to a more family
orientation, we're dead."
To
help keep the Great Rock Golf Club afloat, owners erected their large
climate-controlled tent near the 18th green last summer. It sat next to the
restaurant, Blackwell's, already operating there. By most accounts, it has been
a boon to the club ― though perhaps not a hole in one.
Residents
of the surrounding neighborhood have complained about party noise, and last
year more than 40 signed a petition asking the town of Riverhead to intervene.
Town officials are reviewing whether the tent meets local zoning regulations,
but have not issued any noise summonses. Mr. Hurney
told them he had purchased a decibel meter and would try to hire quieter
entertainment.
One
neighbor, Dominique Mendez, whose home is about 600 feet from the 18th hole, said, "We bought our house here because we wanted
to live in a quiet place, and we thought a golf course would be nice to see
from the window. Instead, people have to turn up their air conditioners or wear
earplugs at night because of the music thumping."
During
weddings, she said: "you can hear the D.J., 'We're
gonna do the garter!' It's a little much."■