Thoughts on why people are walking away from the game...

[braincramp52]

Many are over thinking this subject. Golf is hard to do well. Majority of people don't want to work that hard for a hobby.

[whynotgolf]

Many are over thinking this subject. Golf is hard to do well. Majority of people don't want to work that hard for a hobby.

 

This is mostly true, especially the hard part, but most hobbies require a fair amount work to be good at it. My "other" hobby, music (listening not playing) can eat up a lot more cash than golf if you really want to hear it like the sound engineers intended.

 

I just think to stick with golf long term, you have to be competitive, and you can't fear failure.

 

I had a former co-worker from NJ that loves golf, he sucks relative to par like most of us (back then he may have been a 20 index), but he's very competitive, understands the stroke system and he'll battle you to the last putt drops. I'll bet he's never shot lower than 85, but I understand he still plays.

[thug the bunny]

Golf is the only activity I can think of where all of the teachers are failures. Not a single golf teacher went to school with the intention of growing up to become a teacher. They are all players who simply ran out of competitive gas and started teaching in order to stay in the business. At some point, they all failed as players and started teaching instead.

I don't believe this is true at all. By the time most golfers leave high school they have at least an idea of their chances of making a pro tour. Most know its simply not a realistic possibility, yet many choose a career in golf. They may aspire to be a club pro, to be a sales rep, a club manager, a teacher, any kind of career in the golf world. I know a teaching pro whose only ambition is to teach, and he does it pretty well. He's slogged through the PGA apprentice program to get that specific credential, but his knowledge of the golf swing far exceeds anything taught in the PGA curriculum. If you want to call everyone who makes an informed decision NOT to play golf for a living a "failure", I suppose that's one definition. In my experience, most golf teachers have never really tried to make their living actually playing, so its hard for me to label them so harshly.

 

I think every single kid who makes it onto a college golf team wants to see how good they can get with the possibility of getting to a tour. Then when it becomes obvious that it's not gonna happen some of them become club pros. I personally know 3 kids who have just taken this path.

This makes sense to me. Are those kids "failures" for understanding the limits of their abilities, and making a reasonable choice based on their own limits? Not in my book.

 

I agree the term 'failure' is a bit harsh. Goat was just trying to point out that these guys did not attain their goals, yet they are teaching. But then the same could be said for most HS and college coaches across all the sports. Nick Saban was a DB for Kent St, and that's it, went straight into coaching, what a failure, eh?

[shotmark]

Golf is losing popularity because it's the only sport in the world where you are incentivised for getting worse. In Tennis, football, track & field, you name it, in order to progress in the sport you have to practise and improve. In golf, the worse you play, the higher handicap you get, the more chance you have.

I play off 9 and if I shoot 75 gross against a scratch player who shoots 67 and gets the course record, I've beaten him by one. Ridiculous.

 

Get rid of handicaps and just have three divisions competing equally with each other in that division.

[thug the bunny]

Golf is losing popularity because it's the only sport in the world where you are incentivised for getting worse. In Tennis, football, track & field, you name it, in order to progress in the sport you have to practise and improve. In golf, the worse you play, the higher handicap you get, the more chance you have.

I play off 9 and if I shoot 75 gross against a scratch player who shoots 67 and gets the course record, I've beaten him by one. Ridiculous.

 

Get rid of handicaps and just have three divisions competing equally with each other in that division.

 

Yeah but the chances of you shooting a 75 are pretty darn low. My lowest ever score was 73 playing off a 6hc. I think that the cap system is one of the things that makes golf cool and unique. You can't play basketball against a really good player competitively unless you start getting stupid - you have to play with only one shoe on and shoot using only one hand. In golf I could play competitively against DJ if I played the red tees and he gave me a shot per hole.

[HatsForBats]

Many are over thinking this subject. Golf is hard to do well. Majority of people don't want to work that hard for a hobby.

 

Yet almost every time I walk onto a golf course I am reminded how many players aren't that good, don't practice hard at it and yet seem to enjoy the heck out of it. If how hard it was to do 'well' was an issue I think we would have a LOT less players.

 

I heard something disturbing the other day. Not sure how true it is but I was talking to some parents and they were saying how kids were basically pinned into one sport, and one sport only, from an early age these days. That seems wrong to me IDK. The amount of time, effort and money the kids AND parents are putting into something like baseball these days seems outrageous to me when it is obvious a very large majority of the kid(s) are just average at the very best.

[davep043]

Golf is losing popularity because it's the only sport in the world where you are incentivised for getting worse. In Tennis, football, track & field, you name it, in order to progress in the sport you have to practise and improve. In golf, the worse you play, the higher handicap you get, the more chance you have.

I play off 9 and if I shoot 75 gross against a scratch player who shoots 67 and gets the course record, I've beaten him by one. Ridiculous.

 

Get rid of handicaps and just have three divisions competing equally with each other in that division.

I don't think a system that allows us to compete on a pretty even basis with every other golfer is going to actually turn most people away. Some low handicappers may choose (mistakenly) to believe that the system is unfair to them, but for most of us its the only reasonable way to compete.

[Mikey5e]

Takes too much time. Which is why the ball has hurt the game. A shorter ball is easier to walk to and goes less offline. No better way to speed up the game then to shorten the ball and shrink golf courses. I just don’t see the setbacks of a shorter ball, why are people so emotional about it.

My ego could definitely allow for less distance in golf balls.

Benefits :

1) more club diversity.

2) Better pga tournaments, driver/5i instead of driver/wedge.

3) speed up the game.

4) less property/land needed to build on.

5) less maintenance; grass cutting, fertilizing, and very importantly, less water.

6)

7)

8)

.

.

etc

Negatives:

1) Bruised egos

 

 

[dubbelbogey]

Yeah - I, too, have mixed feeling about golf handicap systems. When perfectly done, they create a situation where would be an even distribution of winners among all handicap levels. Of course, that's the objective, but at many levels it just doesn't feel "correct".

 

Let's assume I'm a 7 hcp and I "beat" somebody who is a 5, but my gross score was worse. What did I really "win"? Sure I get handicaps lets golfers at different skill level's "compete", but it doesn't really feel like it to me. When I kept a handicap and competed, I never got any real satisfaction out of it, to be honest. The only real satisfaction I got from competing at golf was from winning gross-only scores against golfers that were generally as-good-as or better than me. I have no business trying to compete regularly against a scratch golfer.

 

The reality, however, is even worse...

 

The main fault I have with handicap systems in real life is how they basically beg to be gamed, so any sense of "fairness" in the theory of handicaps, is completely lost in the practical reality.

 

I've played a lot of other sports competitively. Most of them have some sort of competitive tier structure. Some do it by age group, some by "rating" (which can be gamed, too, of course, but to a lesser degree.) None are perfect, but they feel more honest than golf's handicap system.

[whynotgolf]

Golf is losing popularity because it's the only sport in the world where you are incentivised for getting worse. In Tennis, football, track & field, you name it, in order to progress in the sport you have to practise and improve. In golf, the worse you play, the higher handicap you get, the more chance you have.

I play off 9 and if I shoot 75 gross against a scratch player who shoots 67 and gets the course record, I've beaten him by one. Ridiculous.

 

Get rid of handicaps and just have three divisions competing equally with each other in that division.

 

Yeah but the chances of you shooting a 75 are pretty darn low. My lowest ever score was 73 playing off a 6hc. I think that the cap system is one of the things that makes golf cool and unique. You can't play basketball against a really good player competitively unless you start getting stupid - you have to play with only one shoe on and shoot using only one hand. In golf I could play competitively against DJ if I played the red tees and he gave me a shot per hole.

 

I agree...most weekend players don't carry an index so getting rid of them maybe won't do a ton of harm, but it does make golf unique. IMO the players that actually carrying an index are the ones that play the most golf and at least make the effort to get better.

[Hellstorm]

The handicap system is pretty fair I think. I play with people that are much lower than I am and they all complain about it because somebody sandbags and wins or somebody that is legit high HC has a decent round....but in most cases, if they played 10 times in row the low guy is going to win 75% just based on consistency.

[whynotgolf]

Yeah - I, too, have mixed feeling about golf handicap systems. When perfectly done, they create a situation where would be an even distribution of winners among all handicap levels. Of course, that's the objective, but at many levels it just doesn't feel "correct".

 

Let's assume I'm a 7 hcp and I "beat" somebody who is a 5, but my gross score was worse. What did I really "win"? Sure I get handicaps lets golfers at different skill level's "compete", but it doesn't really feel like it to me. When I kept a handicap and competed, I never got any real satisfaction out of it, to be honest. The only real satisfaction I got from competing at golf was from winning gross-only scores against golfers that were generally as-good-as or better than me. I have no business trying to compete regularly against a scratch golfer.

 

The reality, however, is even worse...

 

The main fault I have with handicap systems in real life is how they basically beg to be gamed, so any sense of "fairness" in the theory of handicaps, is completely lost in the practical reality.

 

I've played a lot of other sports competitively. Most of them have some sort of competitive tier structure. Some do it by age group, some by "rating" (which can be gamed, too, of course, but to a lesser degree.) None are perfect, but they feel more honest than golf's handicap system.

 

Good points.

 

I think the handicap system really grew to allow similarly skilled players to compete against each other...not so much to allow a "12" to compete against a "5" on a regular basis which I understand that's in play as well. In the AM tour that I played in for a couple of years, I was always grouped in a flight by hdcp, but within our flight it was scratch, low score won.

[wrmiller]

As said above, simply have flights in the tournaments. It was a long time ago, but the tournaments I played in grouped the 3 and lower into the first flight, then 4-8, 9 14, etc., etc.. I don't remember the exact numbers, but you get the idea. HC is strictly for flighting. Scoring is stroke play. No handicapping.

 

This nonsense of a 15 handicap should be able to compete against a 4 handicap is just ridiculous IMO. But that's just me.

[braincramp52]

I also believe that the whole thing about playing tee's according to your age is and has been wrong since forever. Tee's should be played according to ability and not how old you are. Totally wrong mindset from the beginning.

[aliikane]

I got my clubs stolen so that really put my golf in hiatus. Also, it just made me not want to replace them anytime soon because golf clubs are way too easy to steal and takes such a long time to put a good set together.

[Big Ben]

Trackman and Taylormade

[HatsForBats]

I also believe that the whole thing about playing tee's according to your age is and has been wrong since forever. Tee's should be played according to ability and not how old you are. Totally wrong mindset from the beginning.

 

Agreed. Let's add Gender based as to the wrong mindset list as well.

[The Pearl]

Takes too much time. Which is why the ball has hurt the game. A shorter ball is easier to walk to and goes less offline. No better way to speed up the game then to shorten the ball and shrink golf courses. I just don’t see the setbacks of a shorter ball, why are people so emotional about it.

 

The time it takes to play a round and pace of play are not the same thing. You are making the same cognitive error most people do who use this rational to advocate for the shorter ball in that it ignores the fact that you can just as easily stand around waiting to hit regardless of how far the ball goes or how short a course is set up. By this rational, beginners who hit the ball 50 yds at a time should be the fastest players. Anybody who has ever taken beginners to an executive course or a par 3 course which mainly draws other beginner golfer's has experienced the fallacy of this logic.

 

There is no avid golfer, regardless of skill level, that would choose a slower pace of play in order to get done X amount of time earlier. This is the absurdity of Nicklaus's 12 hole course. A 12 hole course can play agonizingly slow. I routinely play in Florida with my Dad and a course full of retiree's who play the course at about 5500 yds or less and none of them can hit it past 200 yds. It is still takes around 4 hours. Instead of standing in the fairway at 150 yds waiting for the green to clear, on a 400 yd par 4, we now stand at 150 yds waiting for the green to clear on a 350 yd par 4. It is the same issue on a smaller scale. This is common sense.

 

Fast pace of play is agnostic to how far the ball goes or how long a course is. Pace of play is relative, the time it takes to play is absolute.

[FourTops]

Too headstrong....refuse to accept golf...like anything else...requires a commitment to learn. The "flash-in-the-pan" opportunists walk away.

[thug the bunny]

As said above, simply have flights in the tournaments. It was a long time ago, but the tournaments I played in grouped the 3 and lower into the first flight, then 4-8, 9 14, etc., etc.. I don't remember the exact numbers, but you get the idea. HC is strictly for flighting. Scoring is stroke play. No handicapping.

 

This nonsense of a 15 handicap should be able to compete against a 4 handicap is just ridiculous IMO. But that's just me.

 

 

But I have played many rounds with a stranger, and if he suggests 'you want to play a $2 nassau', we trade caps and figure things out, and it makes things more interesting. If he wants to sandbag his way to winning $6 that's fine, but I have found that most guys don't do that.

[nsxguy]

As said above, simply have flights in the tournaments. It was a long time ago, but the tournaments I played in grouped the 3 and lower into the first flight, then 4-8, 9 14, etc., etc.. I don't remember the exact numbers, but you get the idea. HC is strictly for flighting. Scoring is stroke play. No handicapping.

 

This nonsense of a 15 handicap should be able to compete against a 4 handicap is just ridiculous IMO. But that's just me.

 

And how often would an 8 beat a 4 in stroke play ? How about in match play ? 9 vs. a 14 ?

 

No handicaps means (almost) no tournaments.

[nsxguy]

Takes too much time. Which is why the ball has hurt the game. A shorter ball is easier to walk to and goes less offline. No better way to speed up the game then to shorten the ball and shrink golf courses. I just don’t see the setbacks of a shorter ball, why are people so emotional about it.

 

This is one of the silliest posts I've ever seen around here.

 

Then again I haven't been here all that long,,,,,,,,,,,

[thug the bunny]

Takes too much time. Which is why the ball has hurt the game. A shorter ball is easier to walk to and goes less offline. No better way to speed up the game then to shorten the ball and shrink golf courses. I just don’t see the setbacks of a shorter ball, why are people so emotional about it.

 

This is one of the silliest posts I've ever seen around here.

 

Then again I haven't been here all that long,,,,,,,,,,,

 

Gotta agree on that one..a shorter ball will speed things up, whaaa?

[Pearson10M]

Late to the party, but here are my thoughts:

 

Time Commitment: I can see how a full Saturday/Sunday (5 h round + drive time) is difficult for folks with a lot of other activities. My suggestion would be to play 9 and/or if you have kids, get them involved and play with them. Could get them interested in the game and generates family-time that would be lost if dad/mom was off playing alone. Alternatively, play real early 5:30 - 6:30 AM Tee Time so your done by noon and have the rest of the day to do other things. Play 9 before work is another option. 6 AM tee time, done by 8, at work by 9.

 

Equipment Cost:

• Buy used or heavily discounted clubs or spend the money upfront and get the latest and greatest, but plan to keep it for 5+ years. Amortized over 5+ years that $2000 initial investment new (mid level irons, driver, putter, 2 wedges, bag) works out to $200/year.
  
• Skip the latest and greatest GPS and Laser. Not necessary to play golf. If you want yardage on courses not well marked, use a free golf app on your phone.
  
• Golf Balls - I am totally clueless on why mid/hi cap amateurs play Pro balls that are $3+ each. I play TF D2+ Feel and Gamer balls only purchased on sale. My new GB are like $0.60/ea. Lots of people I play with play only found decent balls and have a pretty decent cap.
  

Green Fees:

• I look for deals at local courses. Sometimes if you play after 3:00 PM, you can get a good deal. One course near me, with pretty decent conditions, has a unlimited golf deal of $25 walking/$40 cart after 3:30 PM on w/e. In the summer, if I play by myself, I can get 18 in by 7 PM with a cart and 15 walking. $2/hole is pretty decent.
  
• GolfNow has deals for a lot of courses near me. Some of them are ridiculously low. I played 18 at an upscale public course yesterday for $31/cart. My partner got it last minute for $26. I have played multiple courses this year for $20 or less for 18/cart. You don't need to play courses for $70+ to play a quality course.
  

 

If you think golf is expensive, I am a previous boat owner. I owned a 33 ft sailboat for 10 years and it was great until my wife and I weren't using it more than 20 times a year (May 1 to Nov 1). By the time I paid Winter haul/launch storage fees, insurance, mooring fees, taxes, I was in it for $4500/year. That was before maintenance, upgrades, trip rations, etc. A new sail, which needs to be replaced about every 5 years was $2900 for a midlevel quality cruising sail. Racing sales were $4000. I figured we were spending $6000 year to have it. If it was used 100 times, that's $60/time. When we only used for 20 times, that was $300/time!! $6000 buys a lot of golf rounds.

 

One thing I think that would help increase the numbers of people playing is to get more kids involved earlier and grow from the grassroots level and market golf more to women. I would guess that over 70% of the people playing now are male. Also get rid of some of PGA rules that aren't really applicable to your average golfer that is not involved in a sanctioned PGA event. Spicy up the game with variations (Best Ball, Average Team Score, Points, etc.) to add variation in in some cases speed up play.

 

Many folks state that golf is hard. It is, but there are ways to make it less "hard" and more fun. When there is less hard and more fun, generally more people will get involved.

[wrmiller]

No handicaps means (almost) no tournaments.

 

If it gets rid of the sandbagging cheaters, it works for me. YMMV.

[shotmark]

Golf is losing popularity because it's the only sport in the world where you are incentivised for getting worse. In Tennis, football, track & field, you name it, in order to progress in the sport you have to practise and improve. In golf, the worse you play, the higher handicap you get, the more chance you have.

I play off 9 and if I shoot 75 gross against a scratch player who shoots 67 and gets the course record, I've beaten him by one. Ridiculous.

 

Get rid of handicaps and just have three divisions competing equally with each other in that division.

I don't think a system that allows us to compete on a pretty even basis with every other golfer is going to actually turn most people away. Some low handicappers may choose (mistakenly) to believe that the system is unfair to them, but for most of us its the only reasonable way to compete.

 

This sums up the whole pro handicap argument. People think they have a divine right to compete on equal terms with their peers. People play and practice for years to try and improve only to be beaten by someone who took the game up a year ago, never practices, has a ridiculously high handicap but who can be ‘quite handy’ when it suits.

[JohnnyCashForever]

Golf is losing popularity because it's the only sport in the world where you are incentivised for getting worse.

 

I think you're saying that better experienced players are quitting the game because of the handicap system. I'm not quite sure that is the case. The USGA handicap system (in one form or another) has been around since 1911. Golf has had a lot of ups and downs over that time. Golf participation may be declining now, but I don't think that the handicap system is to blame at all.

 

One reason that I have not seen mentioned is that the next generation of potential players find that real sports are a lot more difficult to play than video game sports. I don't know how one would sanely believe that skill in one would translate to the other, but my oldest son is a case study. Out of the blue last week, he told me that he wanted to join the HS tennis team as a rising senior. He has never played real tennis, but for some reason he thought that the game would be easy. His first trip to the court was a rude lesson. To his credit, he is sticking with it, but I think he is sincerely surprised that the game is so hard! I'm beginning to think that perhaps the wii tennis he played well as a kid lulled him into believing the real game was going to be a piece of cake.

[shotmark]

Golf is losing popularity because it's the only sport in the world where you are incentivised for getting worse.

 

I think you're saying that better experienced players are quitting the game because of the handicap system. I'm not quite sure that is the case. The USGA handicap system (in one form or another) has been around since 1911. Golf has had a lot of ups and downs over that time. Golf participation may be declining now, but I don't think that the handicap system is to blame at all.

 

One reason that I have not seen mentioned is that the next generation of potential players find that real sports are a lot more difficult to play than video game sports. I don't know how one would sanely believe that skill in one would translate to the other, but my oldest son is a case study. Out of the blue last week, he told me that he wanted to join the HS tennis team as a rising senior. He has never played real tennis, but for some reason he thought that the game would be easy. His first trip to the court was a rude lesson. To his credit, he is sticking with it, but I think he is sincerely surprised that the game is so hard! I'm beginning to think that perhaps the wii tennis he played well as a kid lulled him into believing the real game was going to be a piece of cake.

 

While I stand by comments re the handicap system, i'm not sure it is a reason for the declining participation levels. I don't know about over there in the states but in Britain I believe this is what has happened. Back in the nineties and early noughties there was a generation of very wealthy under 30's. This coincided with the Tiger era and the resultant raising of the game's profile. As a result many of these young people were enticed into golf. Not wishing to miss the bandwagon anyone with a few spare acres of land built a golf course, many of which were substandard but which had customers anyway because of high levels of demand.

 

Fast forward to 2008 and the global economic downturn. Many people could no longer afford to play the game resulting in membership vacancies at clubs which had been full for years. Those remaining could now be a bit more choosy about where they play and joined clubs with better courses. Dost of the course closures have been at inferior newer courses or hopelessly redundant, shorter older courses.

 

Rather than any apocalyptical downturn in membership I feel the game is just naturally levelling out to pre boom levels.

[mosesgolf]

-Time value of money is much more expensive now

-Wifey has much more say since she works too

-Generational shift

-No transcendent player to bring in more players

[kjohn5050]

I’m just getting back into golf. I can tell you personally that, while I love to play, it just takes so much time to be decent. And, there’s so much else fighting for that time. For me, if I can get my kids into it, that will be the catalyst that keeps me engaged.