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HBO Real Sports: The Downturn of Golf

Yep. Meant to say decreases.
 
arydolphin said:
You mean decreases, not increases.

The really scary number is how few people age 18-30 are taking up the game.

Most people don't understand that the 15 inch cups aren't meant for the "core golfer" like most of us on this board. If a 15 inch cup gets more beginners and kids to have fun when they are starting to play the game, then what's the problem with them?
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Dual hole greens (one standard, one 15") would not be an issue for me.

My course put out a couple of "family tees" about 5 years ago. One tee stake is at about 225 yards from the green on par 4's and 5's and the other stake is about 125 yards from the green on these holes. Sadly, I could count on one hand the number of times I have actually seen people using either of these sets of tees. It was an idea my pro got from the USGA.
 
The feature just concluded, as you may guess by seeing the posts from Sox Fan and myself. Nothing groundbreaking in the story....golf had the "Tiger boom" in the late 90s which coincided with a building boom for golf courses, and then everything went downhill in 2007. Mark King of adidas was on there talking about HackGolf and his 15 inch cup idea, Jack Nicklaus was saying that he was in favor of the nontraditional ideas to get people involved in the game, and the feature also talked about Foot Golf and Top Golf as 2 ideas that may attract more young people to the game.
 
KeyserSoze said:
.........and guys the 15" cup days and soccer golf stuff aren't for us it's for newbs and kids to go out there and have some fun instead of grinding on every 3 foot putt on some 12+ stimpmeter green with 2 groups backed up in the fairways behind them, steaming.
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Exactly. I think most of this stuff isn't for people like us and personally think it misses the point of golf. I play because I like spending a few hours out in nature, wandering around, chasing a ball, and attempting to do something that I'm not particularly good at and that is a mental and physical challenge for me. Foot golf, big cup, fewer holes, etc, all take that away from me. If that's what I was looking for I would go do something different.
 
When did this air? Not on hbo go yet
 
I'm not too concerned with where the game is heading, yet. Golf grew exponentially fast during the 90's and early 00's, and no one expected it. When something grows that fast, it's incredibly hard to sustain. The result is something similar to a population curve. It'll reach a peak, some people will leave the game, but the numbers will plateu eventually.
 
Good.Shepherd said:
You cannot separate "Less people playing" from industry dynamics. It doesn't mean less people will play forever, just that less are making a choice to play under current conditions.

Speed up the round times. Lessen the costs of memberships and tee times. Don't charge out the ass for a single bucket of balls (causing training costs to be high for beginners). Don't try to sell $400 drivers to people every 6 months. Cut the costs and the player dynamics will change as well.

So yes, under the current model golf execs should be nervous. That exec in the video seemed as out of touch as you could be, but his thinking is disfigured by his industry position. They can't keep offering the same value proposition/cost structure and see previous results. But they can do new things that will change the dynamics and demographics and someone will do it because there is still a lot of money in it for whomever gets it right.
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Damn Straight. I started playing golf 25+ years ago and within a year of starting was able to purchase an adult season pass at a (very early) Pete Dye designed municipal golf course for around $250. That season pass was a great value and it allowed me to play frequently (even if it was only 6-holes in the evening), learn the game & improve. In short holding that season pass for 3-years is completely the reason I still golf today because without it I would have never progressed enough to see any value in playing a round or two of bad golf every month and never would have seen the true potential in my ability.

In todays golf market a junior season pass is easily double what I paid for the adult version 25-years ago and an adult season pass costs roughly the same as 45 or 50 18-hole walking rounds. It is a ridiculous amount of money for that type of single course commitment and I only began paying it a couple years back because I can now afford it and do appreciate the convenience. There is however very little economic value or incentive involved in the transaction. I don't know how many times I have asked occasional golfers to come out for a round with me or with our group and had them say "you know what I don't want to pay $40 or $50 just to go out and play bad golf". They will often play in a looser & more social setting like a scramble but a straight up round of golf is rarely a valued option for them.

Good twilight fees with any real value are hard to find. Afternoon rounds on weekends are usually the same rate as the high demand morning tee times. Leagues are a big issue in my mind. The play is notoriously slow and so many courses shotgun the starts at 5:00 or 5:30 which completely ties up the course and really limits access for the average working golfer. Leagues causing course stagnation seriously devalues the option of an evening 9-hole round or the previously mentioned twilight fee etc. etc.

IMO the first course in my area to figure all of this out and effectively connect with the average golfer, occasional golfer, beginner adults and beginner youth will see some significant success.
 
They were walking around an abandoned course, Bridgewater, that my friends always talk about. They liked that course a lot. It's not far from here, but I never played there.
 
Erky said:
They were walking around an abandoned course, Bridgewater, that my friends always talk about. They liked that course a lot. It's not far from here, but I never played there.
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The course over in Lakeland? I loved that course!

They were dead the day they decided to keep a trailer opposed to building a legit pro shop. Shame too, as that was a beautiful track.
 
Otis32 said:
Damn Straight. I started playing golf 25+ years ago and within a year of starting was able to purchase an adult season pass at a (very early) Pete Dye designed municipal golf course for around $250. That season pass was a great value and it allowed me to play frequently (even if it was only 6-holes in the evening), learn the game & improve. In short holding that season pass for 3-years is completely the reason I still golf today because without it I would have never progressed enough to see any value in playing a round or two of bad golf every month and never would have seen the true potential in my ability.

In todays golf market a junior season pass is easily double what I paid for the adult version 25-years ago and an adult season pass costs roughly the same as 45 or 50 18-hole walking rounds. It is a ridiculous amount of money for that type of single course commitment and I only began paying it a couple years back because I can now afford it and do appreciate the convenience. There is however very little economic value or incentive involved in the transaction. I don't know how many times I have asked occasional golfers to come out for a round with me or with our group and had them say "you know what I don't want to pay $40 or $50 just to go out and play bad golf". They will often play in a looser & more social setting like a scramble but a straight up round of golf is rarely a valued option for them.

Good twilight fees with any real value are hard to find. Afternoon rounds on weekends are usually the same rate as the high demand morning tee times. Leagues are a big issue in my mind. The play is notoriously slow and so many courses shotgun the starts at 5:00 or 5:30 which completely ties up the course and really limits access for the average working golfer. Leagues causing course stagnation seriously devalues the option of an evening 9-hole round or the previously mentioned twilight fee etc. etc.

IMO the first course in my area to figure all of this out and effectively connect with the average golfer, occasional golfer, beginner adults and beginner youth will see some significant success.
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One must also remember that there is a reason for all of this. Its not just the "greedy" courses, but the costs it takes to keep it maintained and staffed. Labor cost has gone up, salaries have gone up, benefits have skyrocketed, taxes have skyrocketed. These are all areas that have to come from somewhere to stay afloat and golf is no different than any other industry.

Look around at any other entertainment/leisure purchases and you will see the exact same thing. I dont want to make this political, but the middle class is all but gone and disposable income went with it.
 
Mward said:
The course over in Lakeland? I loved that course!

They were dead the day they decided to keep a trailer opposed to building a legit pro shop. Shame too, as that was a beautiful track.
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Waiting to see what happens to Hernando Oaks. Good layout, the course is usually in good condition, and they have this hulking clubhouse that is like 60% finished, and has been gathering weeds for several years now.
 
JB said:
One must also remember that there is a reason for all of this. Its not just the "greedy" courses, but the costs it takes to keep it maintained and staffed. Labor cost has gone up, salaries have gone up, benefits have skyrocketed, taxes have skyrocketed. These are all areas that have to come from somewhere to stay afloat and golf is no different than any other industry.

Look around at any other entertainment/leisure purchases and you will see the exact same thing. I dont want to make this political, but the middle class is all but gone and disposable income went with it.
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I'm also going to add that course expectations have gone up. Not too many golfers want their home course to look like Pinehurts No2. People want lush green fairways and tightly mowed greens. But want to pay for a cow pasture.
 
JB said:
Look around at any other entertainment/leisure purchases and you will see the exact same thing. I dont want to make this political, but the middle class is all but gone and disposable income went with it.
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As an economist, i couldn't agree with this more. We're trying to fix the game where in my opinion anything that has an effect on it is simple a band aid. I couldn't feel stronger about the "decline" of golf being tied directly to socioeconomic conditions. A larger hole or easier course will have no long term effect on the game.


You want to talk about a game in decline in the US, you look at baseball, which can tangibly show that instead of kids playing baseball they're deferring to basketball or football...but whol is golf losing to? I would submit no one. People aren't making an alternative choice...the relative barrier to entry in today's age is just too high. Nothing will change until either 1) the economy improves, specifically the middle class or 2) costs are cut.
 
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Personally I feel golf is starting to level out so to speak. We had a huge surge when tiger came on the market and guys started making much bigger purses and endorsements driving the overall cost of golf up. Now on the down turn they aren't making less but the aren't putting butts in the seat like they used to either. At some point companies are gonna have to stop paying pro's crazy endorsement deals and pass the savings on to the consumer and make the game more affordable.


Theres also another huge factor that comes into play in all this and that the fact that the average work week is no longer 40 hours a week. It's hard for the average player to go out there on a Saturday after working about 50 hours a week and play a 6 hour round of golf because people constantly play from the wrong tee box.

There are soooooo many reasons for the decline and honestly it always revolves around time and money.
 
USGA and the focus on the .0001% of golfers is killing this game....

The USGA should focus on rule changes that speed up play and not rule changes that make the game harder on the 99.999999% of golfers not on tour (i.e. club grove rules, long putters, not thinking about adding rules for golf balls). There is no way any game should require a book the size of a pocket bible full of rules. Especially a game that until modern times had just one page of rules.

Add to that the trend to make courses harder and harder is making play longer and longer... I hate to break it to the USGA and many courses, the average weekend hacker (being the vast majority of golfers) do not enjoy getting their arse handed to them by 7000+ yard courses with insane slopes.
 
All this "downturn" in golf talk is not true in my area. When I took Delaney to her first High School golf practice there were 24 HS girls there. Our school is not small but not big city huge. Even if half of them stick with it that's pretty damn good in my book
 
That's very true. When I was in High school we had the choice of 4 courses in Springfield, 2 dog track muni's and 2 super exclusive CC's. We did not expect to play a decent course. Now in Springfield we have 9 courses and many of them are affordable and nice.

blugold said:
I'm also going to add that course expectations have gone up. Not too many golfers want their home course to look like Pinehurts No2. People want lush green fairways and tightly mowed greens. But want to pay for a cow pasture.
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JB said:
One must also remember that there is a reason for all of this. Its not just the "greedy" courses, but the costs it takes to keep it maintained and staffed. Labor cost has gone up, salaries have gone up, benefits have skyrocketed, taxes have skyrocketed. These are all areas that have to come from somewhere to stay afloat and golf is no different than any other industry.

Look around at any other entertainment/leisure purchases and you will see the exact same thing. I dont want to make this political, but the middle class is all but gone and disposable income went with it.
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Not my intention to imply greed among course owner/operators is the major issue. I feel it is much more about a lack of adaptability, inability to recognize market opportunities and a general inability to identify what incurred costs actually produce a return.

Without going into too much detail I bid large outside construction projects in the utility industry and can say with a good deal of confidence that organized labor & equipment costs in our business have not increased by a factor of 3 to 5 times since 1988 which is basically what has occurred with greens fees & season pass costs. I have my doubts that the labor & equipment costs related to the grounds care and overall maintenance at a golf course have experienced a significantly higher rate of increase than the overall construction industry.


Land costs may drive a significant amount of this change in many parts of the country but in the Midwest & upper Midwest most of the courses built during the golf boom were built on Ag land or other property not being used for commercial building purposes. From what I see it appears that golfers are being asked to pay for other underutilized costs such as banquet rooms, restaurants & generally oversized facilities that are not contributing in any great amount to the actual golf experience.

I also suspect that many golf courses have overreached on the maintenance commitment & infrastructure. Sure I like playing on courses with well conditioned fairways, graduated rough, manicured fairway bunkers etc. but if the trade-off was $5-$10 to live with fewer bunkers, uniform rough and fairways conditions like we played off of pre-Tiger I am in (and I suspect a lot of other golfers would be too).

As for the redistribution of wealth I can listen to the argument but not sure I buy it. Myself & every person I played golf with when I started (and the first several years thereafter) were solidly lower middle class in income or worse. We had minimal disposable income but chose golf because the cost/value to enjoyment ratio made some sense. I think just as many people in similar economic circumstances would choose golf today but they have so few courses where they can find the value or justify the cost.
 
This doesn't apply to me per se, but lose the stuffed shirt attitude of golf, soft spikes I understand, but lose the dress code, does it really matter is John Q Public wears a collared shirt?? Unless you're a private club, ditch the dress code, it doesn't bother me if a guy is in a t shirt and cargo shorts or cut offs, he's paying you to play.
 
Otis32 said:
As for the redistribution of wealth I can listen to the argument but not sure I buy it. Myself & every person I played golf with when I started (and the first several years thereafter) were solidly lower middle class in income or worse. We had minimal disposable income but chose golf because the cost/value to enjoyment ratio made some sense. I think just as many people in similar economic circumstances would choose golf today but they have so few courses where they can find the value or justify the cost.
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Geographical issue at best. There are thousands of affordable courses based on what people define as affordable throughout this country. There are 39 golf courses with in 12 miles of our home and half of them are less than $25 a round right now and at the peak of season, less than $45.

People complain now about the cost of clubs, yet they have not risen in two decades. The cost of golf balls is up, but more choices and technology in golf balls has given less expensive options.

There can be studies done on every facet and each area will have blame placed. The bottom line is golf is a social sport, people are less social now than they have ever been. Technology has changed that part of our lives. But the idea that disposable income is still there for just as many people is just not accurate. At least not in our state or any of the ones we have traveled to hosting these great events.

As people grow with age, things they chose with their disposable income changes as their responsibilities change. With less disposable income, certain things get cut.
 
I also think that most people don't understand how much golf has grown. Yes, we've lost 5m golfers over the last five years. But we picked up 4 times that in the decade or so preceding it.

In Denver right now there are about 40 or 50 courses I can go hit, right now, within 45 minutes. That's probably too much. Some are great courses, but many are "Freeway" courses designed under the ideologies of the late 1950s to the mid 1990s. There's nothing particularly special about them.

But the public ones tend to get plenty of tee times, plenty of food and beverage revenue, and aren't in any danger of closing. The munis around here are in no great danger, either, and one is even a Donald Ross course (most don't realize a muni is a Ross here).

The ones that are in great danger are the ones that are private to semi-private or are attached to speculative real estate developments that just cannot meet the value proposition. Between the Niklaus course, Arnie's course here, Cherry Hills, and about 15 or so other private courses within an hour there just aren't enough golfers to cover a $3 to $15k annual fee plus all the other expenses. Almost 0% of that is coming from the 18 to 35 market unless they're part of a "family" deal.

So not only do you have plenty of public and muni courses here--too many to play every year--you also have a glut of private, elite private, and development courses. Some of these will absolutely fail. It won't be Cherry Hills, but the other quasi privates are going to have a terrible time keeping up. They already are. Some of the publics will, too, because that number just isn't sustainable.

Open some of those courses for more public play. Advertise the hell out of your facilities, book events, convert the stuffy club house to a more upscale sports bar and you could absolutely increase traffic. I'll save names but I have a two clients looking to do just this right now, and running the numbers they're not worried about the bottom line. It pens well enough for them with the lower annual traffic assumptions.

What's holding them back? Stuffy private member boards. People who want the closed gate, any tee time available any time, "Don't let in the middle class or younger members" type of folks. These guys are in danger of going belly up and are ponying up large sums in loans to their clubs, but they won't let it grow into what it could actually thrive as. When these men and women can no long play golf, pass away, or move away they won't be able to prop these clubs up and they will have killed them off.
 
Good.Shepherd said:
Open some of those courses for more public play. Advertise the hell out of your facilities, book events, convert the stuffy club house to a more upscale sports bar and you could absolutely increase traffic. I'll save names but I have a two clients looking to do just this right now, and running the numbers they're not worried about the bottom line. It pens well enough for them with the lower annual traffic assumptions.
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Great thoughts.

Clubs need to find other revenue generators, and by bringing more people in you would find some of them become interested in golf.
 
JB said:
People complain now about the cost of clubs, yet they have not risen in two decades. The cost of golf balls 9 is up, but more choices and technology in golf balls has given less expensive options.
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If you mean golf clubs, you are mistaken. I purchased a brand new set of Ping Eye 2s (3-PW) for less than $450 dollars in 1992. I purchased another set of Ping ISI irons in 1999 for less than $550 (3-PW). Those same type of clubs are closer to $900. Drivers have also seen an enormous increase in price over the last 20 years as well. These increases are more than the inflation rate over that same time frame, plus now they are all made in China. I know you are going to counter with more exotic materials (titanium, graphite, etc.). Most of these products have been in use for over 30 years. I purchased my first graphite driver in 1983.
 
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