Golf is in the Ruff:
Maybe you heard but the popularity of golf has flattened out. Reasons are numerous:
“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.
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.”
Being a dedicated mini-golf player myself, I can’t say I’m shedding a lot of tears over this. I’d be interested to hear how the people’s game of moats and outsized animals is doing.