So you think golf is a booming sport? Read on ...

MORE AMERICANS ARE GIVING UP GOLF THAN
TAKING IT UP FOR THE FIRST TIME

By PAUL VITELLO
Published: February 21, 2008 - New York Times

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 neighbour, 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."