The Death of Golf
From the dried up fairways of Southern California to the vacant course-side condos on the Carolina coast, we survey the sport's demise — and the entrepreneurs hoping to reinvent it for a new, less patient generation.
While I was pleased with her interest in golf — which I'd played semiseriously, along with seemingly every other man under 40 in the Tiger-dominated late '90s —
I felt I had to prepare her for the inevitable letdown. She lacked the requisite power and the repeating, compact swing I assumed were required of a varsity golfer. Do your best, I told her, but be prepared for the possibility that you might not make the team.
When she texted me a week later to say she'd made the cut, I was stunned.
In the years I'd gone to the school, the golf team was a bunch of country club regulars whose swings were nice right-path whips, golfers who'd been playing for a half-decade by the time they got to high school.
I asked the coach, James Paleno, what had changed.
"There just isn't the interest we used to have 14, 15 years ago," he says.
"Now I have kids showing up who have never hit a golf ball before. Kids are just less aware of golf. They have too many other options.
And then when they find out it takes five and a half hours to play 18 holes, they're just not interested."
By any measure, participation in the game is way off, from a high of 30.6 million golfers in 2003 to 24.7 million in 2014, according to the National Golf Foundation (NGF).
The long-term trends are also troubling, with the number of golfers ages 18 to 34 showing a 30 percent decline over the last 20 years.
Nearly every metric — TV ratings, rounds played, golf-equipment sales, golf courses constructed — shows a drop-off.
"I look forward to a time when we've got the wind at our back, but that's not what we're expecting," says Oliver "Chip" Brewer, president and CEO of Callaway. "This is a demographic challenge."
During the boom, most of those 20-somethings who were out hacking every weekend were out there because of one man: Tiger Woods.
Golf's heyday coincided neatly with Tiger's run of 15 major golf championships between 1997 and 2008.
If you listen to golf insiders, he's the individual most to blame for those thousands of Craigslist ads for used clubs.
When Tiger triple-bogeyed his marriage, dallied with porn stars, and seemingly misplaced his swing all at once, the game not only lost its best player; it also lost its leading salesman.
The most common answer given by golf industry types when asked what would return the game to its former popularity is "Find another Tiger."
Golf's fortunes seem to rise and fall with Tiger Woods' play. He hasn't won a major since 2008.
But you can't blame one man's wandering libido for the
demise of an entire sport.
The challenges golf faces are myriad, from millennials lacking the requisite attention span for a five-hour round, to an increasingly environmentally conscious public that's reluctant to take up a resource-intensive game played on nonnative grass requiring an almond farm's worth of water, to the recent economic crisis that curtailed discretionary spending.
"Golf is an expensive, aspirational game," says Brewer, "and a lot of millennials are struggling with debt and jobs. If you don't have a job, golf doesn't really fit you very well."
Combine the game's cost with the fact that golf is perceived as stubbornly alienating to everyone but white males — Augusta National, home of the Masters and perhaps the most famous golf club in the world, didn't accept black members until 1990 and women until 2012 — and it's no wonder young people aren't flocking to it.
"One of the major reasons golf hasn't been growing is because historically, it has not been welcoming enough," says Greg Nathan, senior vice president of the NGF. "We need to make people feel more comfortable."
Not long ago, the game could count on young fathers to hide out on the links, and weekend tee slots are still filled with plenty of off-duty dads.
But it takes two to properly helicopter-parent a family these days, and that means parents are spending more of their weekends at the playground than at the country club.
During the Tiger boom, everything about the game seemed to expand, from the length of the putters to the size of driver heads to the scale of the courses themselves.
"When I won the U.S. Open at Bellerive in 1965, the course measured 7,191 yards. It was a monster," notes Gary Player, the only non-American to win a career Grand Slam. "Now," he says, "7,500-yard courses are everywhere."
And those courses have raised their greens fees. Pebble Beach may be able to charge $495 for a round, but when your local public course wants $150, it gets steep.
And many of those golf courses weren't designed merely for golf; they were the lure for tens of thousands of homes that aimed to deliver one version of the American dream: golf course frontage.
Lake Las Vegas could be the poster development for an entire era of American excess — the real estate boom, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the exuberant overinvestment in golf courses as bait to sell property.
The 3,600-acre community built around a 320-acre artificial lake in Henderson, Nevada, featured two Jack Nicklaus–designed golf courses and one Tom Weiskopf course, the primary selling points for homes ranging from $500,000 to $5 million.
Ritz-Carlton opened a resort on the lake, which was declared a "Hot Spot" in 2004 by the Washington Post.
One of those three golf courses has since closed, the Ritz-Carlton is long gone (it's now a Hilton), and some of the luxury houses have hit the market for as little as $150,000.
The golf course has been converted to scrubby trails, and it turns out that homes on a desert are a lot less desirable than homes on a golf course.
"For so many years, golf was a tool for developers to sell property," says Phil Smith, a golf course designer who worked with Nicklaus and Weiskopf during the boom. "There wasn't a sense of long-term viability in some of these developments."
As the homes around them hit foreclosure, courses often went neglected, leaving behind what has become a depressingly common sight and the enduring symbol of the sport's sad state in America: the abandoned course going feral.
They line the Carolina coast and pepper central Florida, and are littered throughout the West —fairways sprouting dandelion heads, water hazards infested with snapping turtles, rattlesnakes slithering out of bunkers.
According to the NGF, a golf course in America closes roughly every two days, while just 11 courses were opened in 2014.
Ron Gorski, 59, was the manager of the Escondido Country Club when it closed down in 2013. It's one of a string of courses that have gone brown along the Avocado Highway corridor running north from San Diego. San Luis Rey Downs, a couple of miles north, closed in August 2014, and Carmel Highland, just down the highway, hosted its last round in March.
Gorski, who resembles the actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, grew up in Colchester, Connecticut, spending summers playing shirtless at a local course where his parents dropped him off and picked him up in the afternoon a couple of days a week.
Now, as he drives his Jeep Cherokee down what used to be the first fairway, he shakes his head as he shows me the water hazards gone dry, the stumps where the pine trees used to be — the course now a nocturnal playpen for local wildlife. The tennis courts are cracked, the swimming pool drained, the pro shop gutted. Hawks circle overhead.
The last foursome walked off the course on March 31, 2013, wrote their scores on their Escondido Country Club cards, and drove off.
"It was a damn shame," Gorski says, "but we tried everything under the sun. Lowering greens fees. Kids play free. Two for one. The owners were doing all kinds of Groupon deals, and the remaining members didn't like it." By the time Escondido Country Club closed, there were only 120 members, most paying $300 a month. "That didn't even cover our water bill."
The course was designed in the early 1960s to play through the upscale Escondido neighborhood of midwestern transplants who came to claim their place in the sun in ranch- and mission-style homes backing onto the course.
The homeowners could drive their golf carts off their backyards onto the fairway and then up to the clubhouse. Gorski remembers the good times: "On Friday nights the place was hopping. There were gin rummy games going in the back room. And now look at this."
We've parked and are making our way through the taproom. The San Diego County sheriff's department did canine training here for a while, hiding packages of drugs somewhere in the vast clubhouse and letting the hounds run through the place.
As Gorski steps over the old utility bills and bank statements scattered all over the floor, he looks around the front dining room, notices fresh chunks of missing drywall, and says, "Someone's been in here." Scavengers have returned, jimmying open a side door and trying to strip out the copper piping from the walls. "There's not much left to take in here."
The owner of the course, a development firm named, aptly, Stuck in the Rough, intends to turn the acreage into a residential development, an option available to resorts in prime residential areas. "What else could you do with the place?" Gorski asks. "Golf just didn't work. We couldn't get the young families to come out."
Even before it was shuttered last fall, the Malibu Golf Club decided to cut down drastically on its exorbitant water bill. "They were only watering the tee boxes and the greens," says former club pro Gene Hori. "The good news was you could hit these monster drives, because the fairways were like asphalt and the ball would skip forever."
Now, the manorial wrought iron gates in front of Malibu's only golf club are padlocked, and a sign hangs zip-tied to the metal: beware of guard dogs on patrol.
The man who currently oversees the course, Tom Hix, 61, has gray hair in a thick shock and a forehead pork-belly pink from the California sun.
He is a co-managing member of Malibu Associates, which bought the course near the peak of the golf boom, in 2006, and then filed for Chapter 11 last March. They put up the guard dog signs shortly after, to ward off would-be trespassers. (There are actually no dogs.)
Hix has been developing golf courses for 30 years, as president of real estate and golf course developer Hix Rubenstein, and will not let his clubhouse be scavenged for scraps.
Instead, he has a vision: cutting down the seven-figure water bill by reducing water consumption and introducing a water-saving sewage-treatment facility that will satisfy 10 percent of the course's water needs.
And then turn the Malibu Golf Club into a health-and-wellness center that just happens to include a golf course. "The days of private golf clubs are numbered," he says, "and you have to have something different."
That means building 40 X four-bedroom villas, Beverly Hills housewife–level spa facilities, several restaurants, conference centers, and screening rooms, all housed in LEED-certified buildings and largely powered by solar panels.
"By the time we're done, golf will be really ancillary." He's reassuring potential investors that only 20 percent of the revenue from the club will come from golf; the rest will be from locally sourced produce, barre-method fitness classes, and spa treatments.
In other words, make a golf course seem less like a golf course. "There's nothing else we can do to make this work."
By now the various attempts to "save" golf by making the game faster, cheaper, and easier to play have all taken on an air of desperation.
There have been a number of initiatives and innovations designed to lure younger players onto the course — most of them attempts to speed up the game.
"Golf is losing fans because of time," says Phil Smith. "We need to provide for that." That means shorter courses, some three- or four-hole loops that can be played "through" existing courses, or bigger holes or short-game areas — anything so that a player can go out and swing a club and get back before sundown.
"We have to shorten the courses and change the equipment," Gary Player says. "Your average golfer will have a much better experience if he or she doesn't feel the need to hit a driver off of every tee box."
There is also FootGolf, essentially golf played with a soccer ball, and Big Hole Golf, where the game is played with cups as wide as 15 inches, and, of course, Frisbee golf.
The PGA and USGA have introduced Tee It Forward, which encourages players to set their tees well ahead of their normal tees, with the hope that beginner players can finish a round in three hours.
"I'd like to play a game that can take place in three hours," Nicklaus told CNN this past January. "And something that isn't going to cost me an arm and a leg."
At every turn, the game is trying to lure younger golfers into the clubhouse. The USGA sponsors Drive, Chip & Putt, a skills program for juniors similar to the NFL's Punt, Pass & Kick, and one of last year's participants, 11-year-old Lucy Li, became the youngest player in history to qualify for the U.S. Women's Open.
The First Tee, a partner of the PGA, LPGA, and several major corporations, has focused on introducing golf into schools by donating equipment and providing a golf-friendly curriculum.
Still, the sparse crowd on a Saturday afternoon at the Los Angeles Golf Show definitely skews more Arnold Palmer than Lucy Li.
In fact, there's hardly anyone under the age of 50 who isn't manning a booth.
There were a few dozen golf courses and country clubs trolling for members: Angeles National, Rio Hondo, the Crossings at Carlsbad, each offering deeply discounted rounds and practically begging me to play at their courses.
Their sales managers touted their yardage, conditions — "the only Nicklaus Design golf course in Los Angeles County," a "$44 weekday special including a hot dog and a soda" — and said they believed the golf business was finally rebounding.
But I didn't have to press very hard to get them to admit that business was slow. "It's a challenge," says Debora Main, marketing and sales manager of Candlewood. "It's been a tough few years."
Nearly everyone I spoke with at the convention pointed to one company as the potential savior. "Maybe Topgolf is our Tiger," says Callaway's Brewer, which owns just under 20 percent of Topgolf, the company that has devised a simulated version of the game by putting microchips into balls at high-tech driving ranges.
Players hit into the target area as a computer screen keeps score based on how accurate the shots are. In between drinking, eating, and listening to the house DJs, they stand on an Astroturf mat and play 20 balls.
It's golf's version of bowling. The company was formed in the U.K. but was acquired by a U.S. investment group in 2005.
Topgolf has 13 locations in the U.S., and will have 20 by the end of the year and as many as 50 by the end of 2017, including a 105,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
It's golf as karaoke, with crowds of young people sitting in hitting bays and partying between taking their hacks. And the company is booming, with revenue far exceeding $100 million this year.
Most important for the golf industry, 54 percent of its 4 million visitors last year were between the ages of 18 and 34.
The challenges golf faces are myriad, from millennials lacking the requisite attention span for a five-hour round, to an increasingly environmentally conscious public that's reluctant to take up a resource-intensive game played on nonnative grass requiring an almond farm's worth of water, to the recent economic crisis that curtailed discretionary spending.
"Golf is an expensive, aspirational game," says Brewer, "and a lot of millennials are struggling with debt and jobs. If you don't have a job, golf doesn't really fit you very well."
Combine the game's cost with the fact that golf is perceived as stubbornly alienating to everyone but white males — Augusta National, home of the Masters and perhaps the most famous golf club in the world, didn't accept black members until 1990 and women until 2012 — and it's no wonder young people aren't flocking to it.
"One of the major reasons golf hasn't been growing is because historically, it has not been welcoming enough," says Greg Nathan, senior vice president of the NGF. "We need to make people feel more comfortable."
Not long ago, the game could count on young fathers to hide out on the links, and weekend tee slots are still filled with plenty of off-duty dads.
But it takes two to properly helicopter-parent a family these days, and that means parents are spending more of their weekends at the playground than at the country club.
During the Tiger boom, everything about the game seemed to expand, from the length of the putters to the size of driver heads to the scale of the courses themselves.
"When I won the U.S. Open at Bellerive in 1965, the course measured 7,191 yards. It was a monster," notes Gary Player, the only non-American to win a career Grand Slam. "Now," he says, "7,500-yard courses are everywhere."
And those courses have raised their greens fees. Pebble Beach may be able to charge $495 for a round, but when your local public course wants $150, it gets steep.
And many of those golf courses weren't designed merely for golf; they were the lure for tens of thousands of homes that aimed to deliver one version of the American dream: golf course frontage.
Lake Las Vegas could be the poster development for an entire era of American excess — the real estate boom, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the exuberant overinvestment in golf courses as bait to sell property.
The 3,600-acre community built around a 320-acre artificial lake in Henderson, Nevada, featured two Jack Nicklaus–designed golf courses and one Tom Weiskopf course, the primary selling points for homes ranging from $500,000 to $5 million.
Ritz-Carlton opened a resort on the lake, which was declared a "Hot Spot" in 2004 by the Washington Post.
One of those three golf courses has since closed, the Ritz-Carlton is long gone (it's now a Hilton), and some of the luxury houses have hit the market for as little as $150,000.
The golf course has been converted to scrubby trails, and it turns out that homes on a desert are a lot less desirable than homes on a golf course.
"For so many years, golf was a tool for developers to sell property," says Phil Smith, a golf course designer who worked with Nicklaus and Weiskopf during the boom. "There wasn't a sense of long-term viability in some of these developments."
As the homes around them hit foreclosure, courses often went neglected, leaving behind what has become a depressingly common sight and the enduring symbol of the sport's sad state in America: the abandoned course going feral.
They line the Carolina coast and pepper central Florida, and are littered throughout the West —fairways sprouting dandelion heads, water hazards infested with snapping turtles, rattlesnakes slithering out of bunkers.
According to the NGF, a golf course in America closes roughly every two days, while just 11 courses were opened in 2014.
Ron Gorski, 59, was the manager of the Escondido Country Club when it closed down in 2013. It's one of a string of courses that have gone brown along the Avocado Highway corridor running north from San Diego. San Luis Rey Downs, a couple of miles north, closed in August 2014, and Carmel Highland, just down the highway, hosted its last round in March.
Gorski, who resembles the actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, grew up in Colchester, Connecticut, spending summers playing shirtless at a local course where his parents dropped him off and picked him up in the afternoon a couple of days a week.
Now, as he drives his Jeep Cherokee down what used to be the first fairway, he shakes his head as he shows me the water hazards gone dry, the stumps where the pine trees used to be — the course now a nocturnal playpen for local wildlife. The tennis courts are cracked, the swimming pool drained, the pro shop gutted. Hawks circle overhead.
The last foursome walked off the course on March 31, 2013, wrote their scores on their Escondido Country Club cards, and drove off.
"It was a damn shame," Gorski says, "but we tried everything under the sun. Lowering greens fees. Kids play free. Two for one. The owners were doing all kinds of Groupon deals, and the remaining members didn't like it." By the time Escondido Country Club closed, there were only 120 members, most paying $300 a month. "That didn't even cover our water bill."
The course was designed in the early 1960s to play through the upscale Escondido neighborhood of midwestern transplants who came to claim their place in the sun in ranch- and mission-style homes backing onto the course.
The homeowners could drive their golf carts off their backyards onto the fairway and then up to the clubhouse. Gorski remembers the good times: "On Friday nights the place was hopping. There were gin rummy games going in the back room. And now look at this."
We've parked and are making our way through the taproom. The San Diego County sheriff's department did canine training here for a while, hiding packages of drugs somewhere in the vast clubhouse and letting the hounds run through the place.
As Gorski steps over the old utility bills and bank statements scattered all over the floor, he looks around the front dining room, notices fresh chunks of missing drywall, and says, "Someone's been in here." Scavengers have returned, jimmying open a side door and trying to strip out the copper piping from the walls. "There's not much left to take in here."
The owner of the course, a development firm named, aptly, Stuck in the Rough, intends to turn the acreage into a residential development, an option available to resorts in prime residential areas. "What else could you do with the place?" Gorski asks. "Golf just didn't work. We couldn't get the young families to come out."
Even before it was shuttered last fall, the Malibu Golf Club decided to cut down drastically on its exorbitant water bill. "They were only watering the tee boxes and the greens," says former club pro Gene Hori. "The good news was you could hit these monster drives, because the fairways were like asphalt and the ball would skip forever."
Now, the manorial wrought iron gates in front of Malibu's only golf club are padlocked, and a sign hangs zip-tied to the metal: beware of guard dogs on patrol.
The man who currently oversees the course, Tom Hix, 61, has gray hair in a thick shock and a forehead pork-belly pink from the California sun.
He is a co-managing member of Malibu Associates, which bought the course near the peak of the golf boom, in 2006, and then filed for Chapter 11 last March. They put up the guard dog signs shortly after, to ward off would-be trespassers. (There are actually no dogs.)
Hix has been developing golf courses for 30 years, as president of real estate and golf course developer Hix Rubenstein, and will not let his clubhouse be scavenged for scraps.
Instead, he has a vision: cutting down the seven-figure water bill by reducing water consumption and introducing a water-saving sewage-treatment facility that will satisfy 10 percent of the course's water needs.
And then turn the Malibu Golf Club into a health-and-wellness center that just happens to include a golf course. "The days of private golf clubs are numbered," he says, "and you have to have something different."
That means building 40 X four-bedroom villas, Beverly Hills housewife–level spa facilities, several restaurants, conference centers, and screening rooms, all housed in LEED-certified buildings and largely powered by solar panels.
"By the time we're done, golf will be really ancillary." He's reassuring potential investors that only 20 percent of the revenue from the club will come from golf; the rest will be from locally sourced produce, barre-method fitness classes, and spa treatments.
In other words, make a golf course seem less like a golf course. "There's nothing else we can do to make this work."
By now the various attempts to "save" golf by making the game faster, cheaper, and easier to play have all taken on an air of desperation.
There have been a number of initiatives and innovations designed to lure younger players onto the course — most of them attempts to speed up the game.
"Golf is losing fans because of time," says Phil Smith. "We need to provide for that." That means shorter courses, some three- or four-hole loops that can be played "through" existing courses, or bigger holes or short-game areas — anything so that a player can go out and swing a club and get back before sundown.
"We have to shorten the courses and change the equipment," Gary Player says. "Your average golfer will have a much better experience if he or she doesn't feel the need to hit a driver off of every tee box."
There is also FootGolf, essentially golf played with a soccer ball, and Big Hole Golf, where the game is played with cups as wide as 15 inches, and, of course, Frisbee golf.
The PGA and USGA have introduced Tee It Forward, which encourages players to set their tees well ahead of their normal tees, with the hope that beginner players can finish a round in three hours.
"I'd like to play a game that can take place in three hours," Nicklaus told CNN this past January. "And something that isn't going to cost me an arm and a leg."
At every turn, the game is trying to lure younger golfers into the clubhouse. The USGA sponsors Drive, Chip & Putt, a skills program for juniors similar to the NFL's Punt, Pass & Kick, and one of last year's participants, 11-year-old Lucy Li, became the youngest player in history to qualify for the U.S. Women's Open.
The First Tee, a partner of the PGA, LPGA, and several major corporations, has focused on introducing golf into schools by donating equipment and providing a golf-friendly curriculum.
Still, the sparse crowd on a Saturday afternoon at the Los Angeles Golf Show definitely skews more Arnold Palmer than Lucy Li.
In fact, there's hardly anyone under the age of 50 who isn't manning a booth.
There were a few dozen golf courses and country clubs trolling for members: Angeles National, Rio Hondo, the Crossings at Carlsbad, each offering deeply discounted rounds and practically begging me to play at their courses.
Their sales managers touted their yardage, conditions — "the only Nicklaus Design golf course in Los Angeles County," a "$44 weekday special including a hot dog and a soda" — and said they believed the golf business was finally rebounding.
But I didn't have to press very hard to get them to admit that business was slow. "It's a challenge," says Debora Main, marketing and sales manager of Candlewood. "It's been a tough few years."
Nearly everyone I spoke with at the convention pointed to one company as the potential savior. "Maybe Topgolf is our Tiger," says Callaway's Brewer, which owns just under 20 percent of Topgolf, the company that has devised a simulated version of the game by putting microchips into balls at high-tech driving ranges.
Players hit into the target area as a computer screen keeps score based on how accurate the shots are. In between drinking, eating, and listening to the house DJs, they stand on an Astroturf mat and play 20 balls.
It's golf's version of bowling. The company was formed in the U.K. but was acquired by a U.S. investment group in 2005.
Topgolf has 13 locations in the U.S., and will have 20 by the end of the year and as many as 50 by the end of 2017, including a 105,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
It's golf as karaoke, with crowds of young people sitting in hitting bays and partying between taking their hacks. And the company is booming, with revenue far exceeding $100 million this year.
Most important for the golf industry, 54 percent of its 4 million visitors last year were between the ages of 18 and 34.
One of 13 Topgolf locations in the United States.
"We're not in the golf business, or, OK, we are, but we're really in the hospitality business," says Ken May, 54, the Topgolf CEO.
He was the chief executive who presided over the merger of FedEx and Kinko's and joined Topgolf in 2013. "I opened 500 FedEx Kinko's. I know how to open a lot of boxes," he says, "and that's what we're doing here."
May has a compact, even swing. He lines up a 7-iron on the second deck of a Topgolf facility in The Colony, Texas, takes a short backswing, scoops the ball nicely, and pops it out to about 150 yards.
A score comes up on the screen behind him, giving him four points and informing him that his next shot is worth double.
There are nine games golfers can play at Topgolf, which has targets spread all around the range. So that even though I top my first shot, it skitters along the turf and into a target I hadn't even been aiming for, and I, too, pick up a few points.
"See," says May. "You get some points!"
May, who worked his way through Memphis State unloading boxes for UPS, was a casual golfer before he came to Topgolf. But that's fine, he says, because he sees himself as being in the fun business, not the golf business.
The first requirement for every aspiring Topgolf associate who shows up for a group interview is to get up and dance. "We want people who are outgoing, guest-focused. A lot of people wash themselves out of the process, because on a break, they're checking their phones instead of socializing."
The atmosphere on a typical Friday or Saturday night is more nightclub than country club, albeit with some of the fattiest, heaviest food this side of a Cheesecake Factory.
While a DJ spins on a lounge level, golfers chow down on Mushi (Mexican sushi), Mac Daddy Burgers (hamburgers with macaroni and cheese piled on top), and Injectable Donut Holes, all while ordering cocktails from an attendant assigned to their hitting bay.
The formula is working, with four-hour waits for hitting bays — the patrons killing time at a fully stocked sports bar with dozens of screens. So the golf is pretty much pure profit.
It's the opposite of a stuffy country club or even a posh public course, where arranging a tee time, or even finding the starter's window, can be intimidating for a novice golfer.
On a recent Monday night, I watched a pair of 16-year-olds, an African-American male and his white date, walk into the Colony location and start hitting. When I asked the girl about the experience, she said it was the first time she had ever hit a golf ball. But based on how fun the whole experience was — the food, the games, DJ Snake and Lil John's "Turn Down for What" blaring on the PA — she thought they would be back.
I went back to my hitting bay, waved my 5-iron in front of a sensor, and a microchipped ball already tagged with my name for scoring purposes came rolling down the ramp.
I was hitting 'em OK, fading a little but making 200 or so yards, scoring 75 after 20 balls. (I have no idea if that's a good score or not.)
At one point a guy in khaki pants interrupted me during my backswing to tell me I was picking at the ball instead of scooping.
Jeff Johnston was a PGA professional who offered a half-dozen little tweaks and pointers for my swing — unwanted advice, in other words, after which my game completely fell apart, just like it would have on a real course.
http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/the-death-of-golf-20150625
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Through the drive and enthusiasm of the 193 foundation members, 9 holes were opened by April 1957.
By 1958 a full 18 hole course was in play, albeit only temporary holes. It was to take until 1962 before the Club had permanent greens and tees.
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Executive golfing: nothing more than ‘crack cocaine for rich guys’ or corporate money well spent?
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 22 October, 2017
Donald Trump is allegedly spending one in five days on a golf course, but top execs around the world would probably swear blind they agree with the US president, and that it’s the perfect venue for talking serious business
I have a problem with golf. No, I don’t mean I have a problem with my swing, or with putting, or with getting out of bunkers. I mean I have a problem with golf itself.
I have issues with the role it plays in business life – and that’s not just because Donald Trump, instead of concentrating on doing a good job of ruling the world’s most important economy, is allegedly spending one in five days on a golf course.
My problem with golf goes back a long way, and is rooted in pure and simple jealousy. As a working-class kid in an English grammar school, it was only the rich kids who played golf. When I could not even afford a bike, they would be spending unimaginably huge sums on swanky equipment, and complaining about losing golf balls that cost as much as a week’s pocket money.
My second emotional encounter with the problem of golf arose when I was a young journalist at the Financial Times. We hacks worked interminable hours, late into most evenings.
The polished and smartly-besuited advertising and marketing staff were gone by 5pm, and most galling of all, they took every Friday off to entertain clients on the golf course.
This stuck in my craw for a lot of reasons – and yes, envy was among them. But it struck me as the ultimate con trick that those marketing guys (and most of them were guys) could convince our hard-nosed management to pay for them to spend Friday’s on a golf course, on the claim that this was indispensable to winning advertising business.
To this day, I fail to see why a day on the golf course was indispensable to the marketers’ success. Except of course as blatant bribery.
That our editor swallowed the con trick was more irritating still. There seems deep inequity in allowing such a small elite band to cordon off the world’s 34,000 golf courses – totalling about seven million acres of the world’s most exquisitely manicured real estate – and reserve entrance to so few (at any one time, only about 70 people can actually be playing on an 18-hole golf course).
As petty, proletarian revenge, I have taken many an illicit early morning jog trespassing over such tranquil courses, surreptitiously relishing the peace and quiet, and always managing to avoid the occasional ball. But this is petty revenge indeed.
Piling insult onto injury, the advertising guys channelled a huge proportion of their generous marketing budgets on sponsoring golf tournaments – to which clients were, of course, invited – and on golfing “away days”. All with a straight-faced claim that this was money well spent.
The fact golf was always the clearest corporate “glass ceiling” of all, effectively barring female staff from the chummy clubbiness at the heart of the marketing industry, was an obvious irritant too.
Even today, according to Golf magazine, over 75 per cent of all serious golfers are men, at an average age of 54, and incomes averaging over US$100,000 a year.
But, of course, you need a high salary to play golf. Putting aside the cost of buying equipment, and “de rigueur” golfing gear, club memberships and green fees cost a fortune.
Here in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, fees range from a mere HK$1.5 million (US$192,000) at Mission Hills to HK$12.5m or more at the exclusive Fanling, Deep Water Bay and Shek O clubs. For most aspiring members, the main barrier is not the fee, but the multiyear waiting lists.
I would like to deny that the huge expense of golf were not an insurmountable barrier to me adopting a golf habit, though of course I would be kidding myself.
In truth, the real barrier is not just the aggregated contempt for the cult, but the lack of time. It takes an average 4.5 hours to play an 18-hole golf course. Add on the time it takes to get to and fro, and I like most mortals can’t ever dream of having so much time free around a full working day. The average US male finds time for half an hour a day of sport and exercise (and women less than half of this), and I am not far from the average.
But this does not prevent some of the world’s top business executives, receiving the most breathtaking salaries, from somehow finding the time.
A recent study of the chief executives of the US’s top 1,500 companies found that 363 are regular, serious golfers, playing on average 15 times a year. But 10 per cent of them play golf on average 37 times a year – almost once a week. And one unnamed CEO plays on average 148 times a year – more, even, than Donald Trump.
It puzzles me how such executives can with a straight face justify to their companies’ remuneration committees that their US$10,000 to US$30,000 a day incomes are well spent belting a small white ball around a course.
I have a passing empathy for Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Tipping Point” and a passionate and avowed golf hater, who describes golf as
“crack cocaine for rich guys”.
It is clearly a complex and perplexing addiction.
Of course, the huge golfing industry (worth over US$70 billion in the US alone, where it accounts for almost 2 million jobs) will be quick to counter the error of my thoughts.
With over 60 million golfers worldwide (and 37 million of them in the US), there are doubtless hundreds of readers who are also appalled by my myopic prejudice.
But I stand my ground. Who can reasonably forgive the chief executive of Bear Stearns, who in the four months ahead of the crash of his company in July 2007 played golf 25 times?
How could he possibly have been concentrating on resolving the crisis engulfing his company when he was three days a week on a New Jersey golf course?
I confess I am full of envious admiration for that lucky band of golf addicts that have persuaded their employers to let them work one fifth of their working week from the fairway of a beautifully manicured golf course.
But can I honestly believe this is good money spent? Can I honestly believe that his contribution to his company is augmented by the fresh air and exercise? Can I believe that corporate productivity is enhanced by the practice. Sorry, I think not.
David Dodwell research and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view
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Homes may Replace Golf Course in N.Z
The rolling fairways of Red Beach's 44-hectare Peninsula Golf Club could become home to 600 houses.
Residents are alarmed at speculation a developer could swap the site for a new course, or buy the land to build on it.
A letter sent to members on March 27 2008 by club general manager Phil Christie outlined an opportunity presented to the board. It includes swapping the site for an up to 80 hectare purpose-built course and clubhouse in Wainui.
The site already has resource consent for a course and is about 10 minutes drive from the present course. There also is a substantial cash consideration.
A letter sent to members on March 27 2008 by club general manager Phil Christie outlined an opportunity presented to the board. It includes swapping the site for an up to 80 hectare purpose-built course and clubhouse in Wainui.
The site already has resource consent for a course and is about 10 minutes drive from the present course. There also is a substantial cash consideration.
The Rodney District Council has been fielding inquiries from residents, some of whom have bought their sections from the club, fearing their house values would plummet should the plans proceed.
"There is a high level of anxiety about the idea, and that is a major concern," Hibiscus Coast councillor Zane Taylor says. "The first the council knew of any plans was when it received a copy of the letter. It is just an idea and it may or may not go any further. But we will be watching carefully."
He says the club has nothing to hide and the public would be kept informed. Club members were informed the company that presented the proposals had engaged a course architect to assess the Wainui site's feasibility, and once that was available the club would hold an information meeting.
The Peninsula Golf Club was formed in 1957, the same year that the purchase of land at Red Beach was finalised. Sixty-four sections were included in a scheme which was to see them sold to fund the construction of the course.
"There is a high level of anxiety about the idea, and that is a major concern," Hibiscus Coast councillor Zane Taylor says. "The first the council knew of any plans was when it received a copy of the letter. It is just an idea and it may or may not go any further. But we will be watching carefully."
He says the club has nothing to hide and the public would be kept informed. Club members were informed the company that presented the proposals had engaged a course architect to assess the Wainui site's feasibility, and once that was available the club would hold an information meeting.
The Peninsula Golf Club was formed in 1957, the same year that the purchase of land at Red Beach was finalised. Sixty-four sections were included in a scheme which was to see them sold to fund the construction of the course.
Through the drive and enthusiasm of the 193 foundation members, 9 holes were opened by April 1957.
By 1958 a full 18 hole course was in play, albeit only temporary holes. It was to take until 1962 before the Club had permanent greens and tees.
In 1970 Harry Dale, a well known golf course architect of the time, was commissioned to prepare a Course Master Plan. For the next 25 years this was to become the basis on which all course development was planned.
In 1999 The Board of Management of the Club, whilst recognising the monumental efforts by volunteer members in the formative years of the Club, agreed that only a full course re-construction, which finally addressed drainage in a comprehensive and conclusive manner and provided for the upgrading of the course to one more in keeping with the expectations of golfers today, was practicable.
In 1999 The Board of Management of the Club, whilst recognising the monumental efforts by volunteer members in the formative years of the Club, agreed that only a full course re-construction, which finally addressed drainage in a comprehensive and conclusive manner and provided for the upgrading of the course to one more in keeping with the expectations of golfers today, was practicable.
Chris Pitman, a golf course architect with an international reputation, based in Singapore, was commissioned to prepare a comprehensive Course Master Plan
https://www.pitchcare.co.nz/magazine/homes-may-replace-golf-course-in-n-z.html
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Case Number: 2241
PENINSULA GOLF CLUB AGAINST THE AUCKLANDER
Council Meeting MARCH 2012
A complaint by Patrick Kennelly, Chairman of the Board of the Peninsula Golf Club, against The Aucklander was not upheld, by a majority.
Mr Kennelly had complained that an article breached principles of accuracy, fairness and balance, and of comment and fact.
Background: On February 2 2012 The Aucklander published an article headed “Teed off over fairway”. It reported that the Peninsula Golf Course might soon be converted into ‘the site of little boxes on the hillside’ if plans to develop 500 houses on the site went ahead. The paper had interviewed the CEO of the Hibiscus Hospice, built in 2008, and in their article stated that this was on land purchased from the Golf Club in 2004.
The CEO was concerned that such a development would impact negatively on terminally ill people, as well as adding to existing traffic congestion, and that the sights and sounds of construction would ‘destroy the hospice’s peaceful environment’. She stated that the Hospice had not known of plans to sell the course, “and that’s disappointing. It would have been a factor in our decision to buy if we had known”.
A Hibiscus and Bays Local Board member was also cited as being concerned that strong opposition by his board had not been taken into consideration by the Auckland Council’s regional development and operations committee, who have accepted the re-zoning change for notification. Auckland Council did not respond to requests for information, and the article does not include any information from the Golf Club itself. Patrick Kennelly wrote to The Aucklander’s editor on 5 February claiming that the article published was defamatory of the Club; that the CEO’s quoted comment about non-disclosure was completely untrue, and that the journalist had made no attempt to contact the Club for a response.
The Club had been actively involved in supporting the Hospice over the years, and was very disappointed with the article.
The editor responded promptly, saying she would check with her journalist, and meanwhile had added some of his comments to the online version, giving Mr Kennelly’s opinion of the CEO’s comments. Mr Kennelly replied that the sale of land to the Hospice had started in mid 2002, was signed off in late 2002 with delayed terms to suit Hospice, and was not finalised until 2004. Full payment was not made until May 2005.
He argued that, in not seeking the Club’s input on the article and in publishing, without checking their correctness, the incorrect statements of the CEO (such as that the land was bought in 2004) fell far short of standards of fairness and accuracy, and a complaint to the Press Council would follow.
Suggestions that the Club had acted dishonestly were particularly offensive when the Club had worked so hard to support the Hospice.
The editor sent the draft of a follow-up apology, and offered to point readers to Mr Kennelly’s full letter of complaint online if he wished.
Mr Kennelly responded with additional wording and a demand that the apology needed to be published on the front page, as the article had been.
In its printed apology the paper issued an ‘unreserved apology’ to the Club for any implication that it had acted dishonestly, and acknowledged that comment from the Club should have been included in the article. This was run on 9 February, the next printed version of the paper.
The Complaint: Mr Kennelly sent a formal complaint to the Press Council on 14 February. It covered the details laid out above, and alleged breaches of the principles of accuracy, fairness and balance; and of comment and fact. Mr Kennelly also signed a waiver against any legal action against the paper or journalist. The Newspaper’s Response: In her response, the editor acknowledged shortcomings in the article, but suggested that the article did not, per se, allege that the Club had acted dishonestly.
Regardless, the paper had published an amendment online to include the complainant’s comments and to correct the error regarding the land being sold in 2004, when it was 2002.
The paper had dealt with the complaint rapidly, and doubted that the story has caused damage to the Club’s reputation.
The Aucklander was not ‘creating or stirring’ the story, but reporting on a matter of great interest to local people. The editor reiterated that she had twice offered Mr Kennelly an opportunity to have his full complaint printed, both in print and online, but he had not responded. The paper had printed an apology swiftly.
Further Comment from the Complainant:
Mr Kennelly replied, reiterating his previous complaints. Despite having signed a waiver with regard to the publication of the article, his group still felt that the Club had been defamed.
He felt that the story as written was one-sided and designed to stir the community’s interest in supporting the hospice’s opposition to the Plan Change Application.
He concluded that the Press Council should draw to the journalist’s attention that truth and accuracy are important and that both sides should be considered.
Conclusion: The Council agrees entirely with Mr Kennelly that the published article was unbalanced and contained material inaccuracies.
The paper should have sought the Club’s perspective in writing its article.
The question is whether the newspaper’s subsequent actions were sufficiently remedial.
The paper has already acknowledged its errors; it ‘unreservedly apologises’ to club members as it did not intend to portray the Club as being dishonest; and it corrected the online version, and published a letter on the matters raised the next time the paper was published in print.
While viewing the imbalance and inaccuracy in the article seriously, the Council believes that the paper’s action, taken promptly and with due concern for the Golf Club’s position, was sufficient to avert the uphold decision that would otherwise have resulted. On this basis the complaint is not upheld by the majority of the Council. Dissent: Barry Paterson did not support the decision as, in his view, the correction was inadequate.
The comment attributed to the Chief Executive of the hospice inferred that the Golf Club sold land to the hospice knowing that it intended to sell the balance of the golf course for housing purposes and did not disclose such plans to the hospice.
This was a false statement about the Golf Club to its discredit.
The correction covered this point in a general way and did not identify the statement on which the apology was based.
Further a correction, to be effective in the circumstances of this case, needed to be given reasonable prominence.
The original article was a full page article and to blunt the effect of the inference the apology should have been given equal prominence and not placed at the end of an article headed “Your feedback: buses, bridges, berms and golf”.
Press Council members considering this complaint were Barry Paterson, Pip Bruce Ferguson, Kate Coughlan, Sandy Gill, Penny Harding, Keith Lees, Clive Lind, Lynn Scott and Stephen Stewart. Chris Darlow and John Roughan took no part in the consideration of this complaint. |
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