Q: Is golf participation on the decline.
A: Internet reports say that it is on decline.
Taylor/Made Adidas, golf world's biggest maker of golf clubs and golf clothes, saw their sales drop 28% last year. They further lamented that more courses are closing now than new ones opening.
Nationally known, Dicks Sporting Goods, also reported a 10% drop in the sale of their golf equipment.
It may be the cost of playing, or the amount of time it takes to play 18 holes, the difficulty for a beginner to reach any degree of efficiency, what ever the case, young people are just not turning to golf at the rate they once did.
The idea for all amateurs in all games is to have fun competing. It may not be important at all in the decline of golf, in fact it might be just the opposite , but golf - above all other games - may have impeached the original intent of the game with a wide variety of capricious changes that would embarrass the women's fashion world. While the PGA Tour is still the soul of course integrity, many golfers piddle with the game as if the rules and tradition were just whimsical annoyances to spoil our fun.
Let's take for instance the absolutely ridiculous "Leaf Rule" which is often used here in Kennett, and can't be found in any rule book anywhere. A bad shot is hit into the trees where leaves naturally accumulate. The player cannot find his ball. So he "ascertains" where his ball should be, and without a penalty stroke sets up an advantageous position and fires away. Pure smoke and mirrors.
Move the ball to a better lie, in the rough, or trees. Grounding a club in a hazard. Ignoring the rule formality of a shot hit out-of-bounds. No penalty for hitting the wrong ball. Teammates giving each other questionable putts. Improving position by a club's length. And on and on until the integrity of the game highly resembles a TV wrestling match.
This piddling around with the rules has not applied yet to other sports played by amateurs no matter how insignificant or in the category of just having fun. The reason being that rules make it just as fair for one as the other, and making the game easier does not necessarily add to the fun. The trend in golf today, however, is that the rules are distressfully difficult. We want it as easy as we can get it.
Nowhere is this better demonstrated than what could be called "The Rush To The Gold Tees."
Like the gold rushing forty-niners of old, golfers (of all ages) are prospecting on the Gold Tees for ego lifting better scores.
Years ago public courses in big cities were (as probably today) operated by the Park Commissions. Strapped by budgets, these Commissions were not about to have three sets of tee-markers. There was just "The Tee," and that's what you played. Going from the longest tees to the so-called "Members Tees" seems to be more a country club advent meant for aging players, or those with health problems.
Now, however, we have the Gold Tees, and though it may sound like an avenue for the decrepit, there is a snowballing avalanche by all ages to the point a truly definitive age limit may not have yet been reached.
Several years back the Men's Golf Association at Kennett decided Gold Tee players could participate in selected tournaments. The age for Gold Tee players was at that time 75 years old. Yet that same night they changed the age to 65 years old. Now a man at 65 years still has some get-go in him. It's been proven many times. But at 75 his get-go has been gobbled up by the galloping no-goes. If it just had to happen (which it didn't for millions of golfers in the past who never heard of a Gold Tee) then 75. or at least 70, seems a more logical time for shorter tees.
At a recent fun tournament in Kennett the powers at be decided a man 55 years old could play from the Gold Tees. Granted just a fun tournament, but this snowball seems to be gathering momentum. Whoa... What's next age 45, then 35? Most people know that an athlete is past prime time after 35. Maybe 35 should be the age for the Gold Tees.
One of the beauties of golf is that you don't have to run, or hit anyone. As long as you can limp out there you can still have some fun
Recently, right here in Kennett, we have lost several once dedicated golfers who are still perfectly capable of playing the game. Maybe they feel that they have been thrown under the bus by this messing around with the ages; or maybe they don't like the feeling of being anachronistic relics of the past.
All of the above may not have anything to do with the decline of participatory golf. At the same time there is no evidence that the piddling potpourri of arbitrary changes in the game have done anything that add to its luster.