CYCLING HAS BECOME BOOM PUBLIC
SPORT AS GOLF INTEREST DECLINES
By Ben Dirs,
BBC Sport
The figures suggest more of you will be receiving cycling-related kit this Christmas than golf-related caboodle.
Sport England
reckons there were more than two million adults cycling at least
once a week between April 2013 and April 2014, compared to 710,400
taking to the fairways.
ENGLISH GOLF LOSES 180,000 OVER EIGHT YEARS
More worryingly for golf in England, participation has
fallen by about 180,000 in eight years. Cycling, on the other hand,
gained about 270,000 pedal-pushers in the last year alone. This figure
does not include people tootling to work or down to the local. Cycling
waxes while golf wanes.
Now there is evidence, albeit tentative, to suggest the
truism might actually be true and that golfers are indeed morphing into
cyclists. A 2013 study by
Sports Marketing Surveys,
which has been examining golfers' habits for 17 years, showed that
20% of golfers who packed up the game in the past six to 24 months -
whose reason was to take up a new activity or sport - did so to take up
cycling.
More studies need to be done but the anecdotal evidence
was already persuasive. Golf and cycling overlap in terms of their
socio-economic profiles. Both sports can be reasonably cheap, but they
can also be eye-wateringly expensive. Golf has always had players with
'all the gear and no idea', but cycling also has its own somewhat
pejoratively named demographic:
'Mamils', or 'middle-aged men in Lycra'.
Last month, Sir Bradley Wiggins expressed his amazement that cycling had gone from being
a slightly eccentric pastime to "cool" in such a short space of time.
As somebody who shares office space with hundreds of Mamils (the
BBC is crawling with them, not to mention Mawils), I heartily disagree.
But if not cool as such, cycling has certainly become mainstream and
aspirational.
So what is cycling doing right that golf is not doing?
After all, while it is true that Wiggins has been an integral part of
British cycling's remarkable rise over the past decade,
courtesy of his Tour de France victory in 2012
and four Olympic gold medals, the UK's elite golfers haven't been
doing too bad either, serving up four different major winners in the
last five years. World number one Rory McIlroy won two of them in 2014.
McILROY'S MESSAGE FOR GOLF ORGANISERS
But when the best golfer in the world is telling us his sport needs to get its house in order -
as McIlroy did at this year's Masters
and again after finishing runner-up at Sports Personality of the
Year - you know the sport is not as cool as it should be.
And not as
cool as cycling apparently is, despite being responsible for acres and
acres of unsightly Lycra, stuck fast to wobbling limbs like so much
cling film.
"Golf costs too much, it takes too long and it's
difficult," says Peter McEvoy, amateur legend, course designer,
administrator and co-inventor of
PowerPlay Golf,
which it was hoped would be the game's answer to Twenty20 cricket.
"The manufacturing industry continues to address the
difficulty issue, by making the game easier to play and therefore more
palatable. But with PowerPlay we tried to address the main issue, which
is that golf takes too long."
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"Everything's so instant now and everyone doesn't have as
much time as they used to. So you maybe try some way of speeding the
game up."
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Read more from McIlroy
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PowerPlay, which was played over nine holes and
featured two flags per green and bonus points, was well backed by the
game's stakeholders.
The staunchly traditional Royal and Ancient,
which deigned to admit women members only a couple of months ago,
helped write the rules and the European Tour allowed events to take
place in conjunction with its own tournaments. However, when
PowerPlay's main sponsor went bust in 2011, the format was mothballed.
But golf administrators remain acutely aware that
societal changes, whereby would-be golfers are spending their spare time
on less time-consuming activities, mean alternatives to the traditional
18-hole format must be made available.
18-HOLE GOLF DOES NOT FIT WITH MODERN LIVES
The problem is not necessarily, as McIlroy seems to
believe, that golf is not played fast enough. It is that the whole
concept of 18-hole golf does not fit in with many modern lives.
"When I stopped playing cricket, I toyed with the idea
of getting really into golf," says Sean Balmford, a 50-year-old
derivatives broker from Essex. "But golf takes too long. It's a five or
six-hour thing and I've got three kids, so it's not fair to be
disappearing for that amount of time on a weekend.
"What appeals to me about cycling is that you can go
out for as little or as long as you like. You can go out for a 40-minute
hard ride on your own or, on a nice, sunny day, you can go out with a
couple of mates for a couple of hours."
There is plenty of evidence to show cycling has become a bonding exercise for men, just as golf still is
England Golf chief executive David Joy concedes golf
has to become more flexible. But you might be surprised to learn that he
sees increased golf club membership as key in arresting the slide in
participation. Surprised, because golf clubs have long been perceived -
rightly or wrongly - as exclusive, stuffy and unwelcoming.
"We need to address the time issue," says Joy. "That
means offering six- and nine-hole options, so that you can leave the
house, play and be home again in a few hours. If we do that, more people
will be choosing golf over cycling.
GOLF CLUBS NEED TO BECOME MEMBER-FRIENDLY
"The 25% of golf clubs that are enjoying membership
growth [overall golf club membership fell 20% in England between 2004
and 2013, and 14% in Scotland] have realised the needs of potential
members have changed. They offer flexible memberships - Sunday
memberships, twilight memberships, 10-15-rounds-a-year memberships.
"Golf clubs also need to be modern places, friendly
places, places with relaxed dress codes where you can use the internet
and families are welcome.
"Our research shows that club members play more often -
65% of members play every week - so our strategy is to get more golfers
into clubs. But a recent survey showed the average number of members
recruited by clubs in the last two years was 77, but the average number
leaving was 84. So quite clearly the product that's being offered in too
many clubs isn't right at the moment."
Cycling might not seem like a social sport - try
chatting about the scandal of Jimmy Bullard's early eviction from the
Celebrity Jungle while you're battling a hill in Cumbria. But the fact
that cycling is a bespoke pastime appeals to a British society that is
less rigid than it once was.
PUB DOUBLES AS CYCLING CLUBHOUSE
Balmford and his mates - 'The Shenfield Shifters' -
have a clubhouse, but it's actually a pub. "There'll be between six and
10 of us," he says. "We'll ride for a couple of hours and then head
straight to the bar. We catch up, have a beer, but we're also keeping
fit. It's the perfect social pursuit."
Some of the world's best golfers, including Graeme McDowell, launched PowerPlay Golf in 2011
Adrian Markham, a 39-year-old project manager from
Lincolnshire, has thrown himself into sportives, mass-participation
cycling events. Crucially, cycling makes Markham happier than golf ever
did.
"I got disillusioned with golf," he says. "I was
putting in lots of time at the driving range, playing competitions,
reading psychology books and getting so little reward. Because it became
all about the score, I wasn't enjoying the game itself. Golf is so
difficult, so it's difficult to enjoy it.
"Cycling is more inclusive. I'm not beating myself up
every time I get on a bike. I did a sportive last week - started in
Clitheroe, went up through the Forest of Bowland. It was brutal at times
but the sun was out. I took in the scenery. I wasn't trying to beat a
time. I was just out to enjoy it.
"Sportives are social events, occasions in stunning
places that bring a good mix of people together. Cycling is a whole new
life, it's been a bit of an eye-opener."
CYCLING MORE FAMILY ORIENTATED
Chris Nash, a 45-year-old from Salford who works in
customer service, says one of the big appeals of cycling is that the
whole family can get involved. This Christmas, Santa Claus will deliver
both him and his daughter brand new bikes.
"Since my daughter arrived I've had less free time and
the golf clubs haven't left the shed," says Nash. "Modern men can't get
away with disappearing for seven or eight hours on a Sunday like our
dads might have done. My missus would be a lot less tolerant than my mum
was.
"And the golf clubs I used to play at weren't welcoming
environments for children. Golf has always had that feel about it. But
cycling feels inclusive. It's something we can do as a family, which
never would have happened with golf. My wife never got golf, whereas now
she's talking about maybe getting a bike as well."
While Joy points out that 100,000 women are members of
golf clubs in England, he also admits that the amount of girls is at an
all-time low. He cites conservative dress codes and stubborn,
old-fashioned notions of what golf clubs look and feel like as barriers
to girls getting involved.
100,000 WOMEN HAVE TAKEN UP CYCLING
In contrast,
British Cycling reported
that more than 100,000 women joined its programmes in 2013 and a
24% increase in the number of women racing in formal cycling events.
This surely has something to do with the recent proliferation of female
role models in British cycling, with Victoria Pendleton and Laura Trott
to the fore. Golf administrators must hope
English prodigy Charley Hull
can do the same for their sport.
Then there is the clamour for kit, as well as caboodle.
While both golf and cycling are battling for people's time, they are
also battling for people's money. And while
bicycle sales increased by 14% in the UK between 2008 and 2013,
the British Golf Industry Association recently revealed that
members' sales had fallen for the past four years.
"I'm constantly upgrading my bike here and there," says
Balmford. "It might be a new set of wheels, a new chain, new cogs, the
list goes on. With all the gear you can buy you can easily be spending a
couple of grand a year."
GOLF DOES NOT NEED TO PANIC - YET
That's a lot of money that a decade or so ago might
have been spent on adjustably weighted putters, laser-milled wedges and
drivers that promise to elevate 'smash factor'. As well as that electric
trolley you always forget to charge.
Golf doesn't need to start panicking yet. Just under
3.36 million Britons played at least one round of golf on a full-size
course last year, according to Sports Marketing Surveys. This is more
than 600,000 down from 2003, but it is still a number that most sports
in Britain can only dream of.
However, golf's administrators might just have to
accept that their sport will never be as popular as it was in a gentler
age. And that folk who once dozed in chairs by clubhouse fires now
attack hills in Lycra.
Labels: Golf Development
