"A rollback in equipment...would be a huge boon to the golf industry in my opinion."

Thanks to reader Mark for this Tom Kite interview from last week. He appeared with Steve Czaban, host "The First Team On Fox," a nationally syndicated Fox Sports Radio show.

After the usual small talk Czaban asked Kite if he's longer now than he was in his prime. Kite says he's about 10 yards longer now than at his peak.

Czaban then asks if this is a good thing. Kite's reply: 

A: No, it's very detrimental to the game. All you have to do is look all over the place and you can hear all of these comments about how the game is not growing. Why isn't the game growing? It takes too long to play golf. It's too expensive to play golf. Those are the two most comment things that are cited for why the game doesn't grow. Well it takes longer to play an 8,000 yard course than it does a 6,500 yard golf course. Why does it cost more? It takes more money to maintain an 8,000 yard course with wider fairways and wider golf course envelopes than a 6,500 yard course. The fact that architects are forced to design golf courses...to try to build a golf course that stands up to the technology and what does it do? It makes the courses more expensive, you need more land to build the courses on and consequently the game is more expensive and takes longer to play and those are the two reasons why everybody keeps saying the game is not growing.

A rollback in equipment, which probably will never happen, but a rollback in the metal woods, in the graphite shafts and specifically the ball, would be a huge boon to the golf industry in my opinion.

Q: Who out there right now is really leading the push for that.

Nobody. Nobody. Right now the manufacturers are the ones running the game. The USGA basically lost the war when they didn't stand up to Karsten Solheim on the square grooves issue years and years ago. They backed down, they basically said if you have money and have sharp attorneys, the USGA will back down and they have ever since. Unfortunately they and the R&A are the rulemaking bodies and it's not going to happen in my opinion.

Well, glad Tom's already picked up that Bobby Jones Award from the USGA.

Can they revoke those? Let's hope not.  

How The R&A Got The Groove Rule Sacked?

E. Michael Johnson reports that the proposed rollback on grooves for competition is all but dead for 2009 and not looking good for 2010.

A call to the USGA last week for a status report on the proposal produced little in the way of news, as senior technical director Dick Rugge declined to comment on specifics -- except to say there was "no set timetable for a decision on grooves."

However, industry sources familiar with the situation tell Golf World the Condition of Competition as proposed is no longer on the table, meaning tour pros are likely to be able to use current grooves in 2009.

Meanwhile, USGA and R&A officials are set to meet again this month to discuss the groove proposal, with one industry insider characterizing the ruling bodies as still somewhat apart. "The USGA is ready to go, but the R&A believes the proposed rule is trying to do too much," said the source.

"Too much" to the R&A is defined as "any action whatsoever."
 

Meanwhile in this week's SI Golf Plus, PGA Tour pros were asked:

If the USGA bans U-grooves, will you sacrifice distance in favor of accuracy off the tee:

Yes: 25%

No: 75%

While I've never believed the U-groove change would impact player thinking off the tee, I do believe it would alter the aggressiveness of their approach shots and restore the importance of firm greens. Too bad the R&A does not agree.

The Comeback Of The Caddie?

Thanks to reader Nick for Blaine Newnham's story in the Seattle Times about the comeback of the caddie.

To get an idea how big the caddie renaissance is, Bandon Dunes has nearly 300 caddies in its recently erected $1 million "shack" near the practice facility. It has a high-tech TV and large lunchroom and locker room for the employees.

At Chambers Bay, where there are 170 caddies, the lure for the older guys is the chance to play one round for every five you caddie.

For the kids there is chance for a college scholarship.

There are 19 students attending the University of Washington on an Evans Scholarship, money dedicated for tuition and housing at the UW or WSU for kids who meet the entrance standards and have worked in the golf industry, historically as caddies.

Callaway Supports Bifurcation

Very nice spot by reader Mark reading an Economist piece on Callaway CEO George Fellows, who apparently endorsed bifurcating the sport to save it.

Another obvious strategy, though a more controversial one, is to make golf more “consumer-friendly”—meaning easier. Golf's rulemakers have tended to focus on maintaining the integrity of the game for the best players, which has made life tough for the rest. Callaway has to conform to a welter of arcane specifications: there are regulations about how far from the centre of the club a ball can be hit and still go straight, for example. These are intended to stop Tiger Woods shooting 30 under par, but also make the game less fun for less gifted players. Golf needs to “bifurcate” into a professional sport and a game for the masses, says Mr Fellows. One opportunity is to think outside the old 18-hole, four-hour box. Callaway has recently invested in TopGolf, a business that turns a driving range into a sort of dart board, where players aim at targets and scores are calculated with the help of radio transmitters in the balls.

It's amazing that it took a major company this long to endorse the concept. But at this point, other than grooves, is there really much that could be done to make equipment so much more user friendly that it would encourage growth?

Perhaps if Mr. Fellows had noted bifurcation could lead to less expensive equipment thanks to less emphasis on spending ridiculous marketing millions to convince people that they can get the same benefits from technology as the PGA Tour's best, then he'd be onto something.

Don't Close Down Those Courses Just Yet

Thanks to reader Scott for what we can only hope does not become a trend: golf courses closed for housing developments, only to sit there festering due to the sudden downturn in the real estate market.

Gerald Carroll in the Visalia Times-Delta reports on the abandoned Sierra View Golf Course, once slated for development and now going to seed.

Don't You Wish There Were More Places Like This...

Dave Hackenberg tells the great story of 3 couples buying and turning around Cherrywood Golf Course in Ottawa Lake, Michigan.

Three months after Germain got his tip, Cherrywood had six new owners. They also are Cherrywood’s only six employees — Ben and Kara, the Germains, and Hire and his wife, Kathy.

It’s a 24/7, sunup to sundown thing for Ben and Kara, who live on site and run the show. But it’s truly a second home for the other four. Everybody takes turns behind the counter, or pulling weeds, or servicing machinery, or grabbing a paint brush, or planting flowers, or washing down the carts, or spreading fertilizer, or cleaning the clubhouse, or picking up brush after a storm, or, well, you name it. You tend to take things seriously when you’ve taken a deep dip into your savings account and there’s a mortgage call every month.

"We need to concentrate on getting more affordable golf for people to play.”

I'll pass on Doug Ferguson's numbers-heavy case that the Masters is pretty much the same because he didn't even acknowledge the avalanche of negative player feedback. So instead, let's focus on the positive from this week's column.

From Tom Watson:

FINAL WORD: “We have our Olympics – we have our major championships. And to add another layer in the Olympics, I think is the wrong thing to do. We need to concentrate on getting more affordable golf for people to play.”

“There’s a bit more hesitation out there for buying new equipment.”

Golfweek's Bradley Klein talks to a variety of people with different ties to the game, and contemplates whether golf is really recession proof.

Scott Peters, owner of New Hampshire-based Golf & Ski Warehouse, is witnessing first-hand such changes in consumer behavior.

Though he experienced “a good summer and Christmas for 2007,” Peters says “the first three months of 2008 have been down” compared with the year before.

He also blames more stringent USGA equipment limitations for making consumers skeptical whether next-generation products are truly superior to their predecessors. Mix such wariness with economic woes and, Peters says, “There’s a bit more hesitation out there for buying new equipment.”

This would assume that a decent portion of the golfing public even knows what the USGA has done, which I suppose is possible. Or could it be that people simply realized that it's silly to keep a driver every year...or even more often than that?

"The cost of playing has come down in recent years to the point where average greens fees for nine holes is $12."

From Leonard Shapiro in the Washington Post:

The most astounding statistic of the first National Golf Day came from Joe Steranka, executive director of the PGA of America. He said that because of the increase in the number of daily fee facilities in the United States, the cost of playing has come down in recent years to the point where average greens fees for nine holes is $12.

Perhaps someone forgot to study public courses in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

Or the other 48 states. 

"Golf is going to have to do a lot of thinking in the future."

Reader Andruw pointed me to this AP story talking about how all the well-off patron offspring would be getting in this week to help grow the game. Not much of interest, though this quote from Gary Player is worth remembering:

"Golf rounds are going down. The average golf course is getting so long. All the clubs you go to are making their golf courses longer and longer, so all the costs are going up and up," Player said. "Golf is going to have to do a lot of thinking in the future. That’s why we need a lot of young people to be playing golf."

"The fact, is golf isn't hungry. It talks hungry."

It's been too long since I've read an honest to goodness rant, but Bob Carney delivers on the GolfDigest.com editor's blog.

I'd just hate to have been Carney's keyboard after he and a buddy got turned away from Montauk Downs on a perfectly playable day (well, to Easterners anyway):

The fact, is golf isn't hungry. It talks hungry. It issues press releases as if it's hungry. But if it were really hungry, there would have been no question about golf on Sunday at Montauk Downs. If it were really hungry, there would be free clinics for kids every month at every public course. If it were really hungry, there would be after-school junior hours where kids could get access to local courses. If it were really hungry there would be nine-hole leagues for every conceivable human subdivision, from singles to sorority sisters, heck, maybe even six-hole leagues. If it were really hungry, I'd be writing about a crazy, gale-swept, laugh-out-loud, triple-digit round at Montauk on Sunday.

Golf ought to take a lesson from the Mom and Pop owners of the courses we grew up on who created couples outings, hit-and-giggle clinics, breakfast leagues, free hot dogs with rounds, you name it, to fill their "inventory". Or from Frank Thomas, the former USGA official whose new book, "Just Hit It", echoes this back-to-basics theme. "Golf really should be a simple and pleasant experience," says Frank. "The game began in nature," says Frank. "That's where we found satisfaction." Not in perfect conditions. Not even in big-name designs. That's all we wanted on Sunday, a little tussle with nature. Folks who understand why people play don't find reasons to shut their gates. They might warn us about the wet spots. But they enjoy crazies like Rich and me who would want to play in a 40-mile-an-hour wind. We're they're customers.

On the subject of participation levels, thanks to reader John for spotting Michelle Coursey's piece about dwindling numbers in New Zealand.

Player Wives Not The Only Ones Who May Turn To Botox

Thanks to reader James for Bloomberg's Michael Buteau report on the exciting news that the yips may have a medical cure: Botox.

Well, news might be a stretch. Let's rephrase that: interesting information gleaned from a drug company study. The same drug company that wants to sell their stuff:

The study is the first to include analysis of brainwaves and muscle activity in hands and wrists, Adler said. Researchers monitored 50 golfers, 25 of them yippers and 25 non-yippers.

It was financed by a $193,000 grant from Allergan Inc., of Irvine, California. Botox is Allergan's biggest product, with $1.2 billion in sales last year. The drug is best known for reducing skin wrinkles and also is used to treat muscle cramping in musicians and Parkinson's disease.

The yips, commonly described as an involuntary movement, or jerking, of the putter before striking a golf ball, have long been thought to be caused by anxiety or stress.

``Your brain is sending you a message and your body just kind of backfires,'' said Louise Simpson, 50, of Tempe, Arizona, who took part in the study.

And now the body will send a message that because you don't have those forehead wrinkles anymore, you can make this three footer? Oh, sorry...

If the study shows yips are primarily caused by muscle cramping, Adler said the condition could be treated with small injections of Botox. The drug isn't considered performance- enhancing and isn't banned under golf's new subtance policy, said U.S. PGA Tour Executive Vice President Ty Votaw.

That'll change!

Meanwhile, noted yipper Doug Sanders isn't so sure...

Sanders, 75, who missed the British Open putt, says he knows one proven cure: ``It's called vodka tonic.'' Alternatively, he says, ``Sometimes if you have three or four beers, it really helps a lot.''

Alcohol can be a short-lived treatment, Adler says. Yips sufferers can become tolerant of the drink and will eventually need more to get the same effect. Over time, the movement disorder often gets worse, he said.

The movement disorder. Now there's a euphemism for yips!

"The concept of opening the premises up to local youngsters is something that is not only frowned upon, it is never actually considered by club committees whose next original thought will be their first."

After reading the New York Times cover story on dwindling U.S. participation, John Huggan sees many of the same issues afflicting golf in Scotland.

Of course, increasing participant numbers is never really going to happen, no matter how many schemes golf's alphabet-soup organisations come up with to justify their increasingly pointless existences. As long as the golf club system itself is in place, the game is doomed to stagnate. Clubs, after all, are by their very nature exclusionary and exclusive. Especially at the so-called 'high-end' establishments, wonderful golf courses sit all but empty on far too many beautiful summer evenings. The concept of opening the premises up to local youngsters is something that is not only frowned upon, it is never actually considered by club committees whose next original thought will be their first.

Is it any wonder then that Scotland's best golfer is a rapidly ageing 44-year-old whose best days are very much behind him? Is there a less-welcoming environment for young people than the typically rule-ridden and grey-haired golf club? No you can't wear your jeans or your trainers. No you can't play before 4pm in the winter months. No you can't play off the back tees even if you can beat 99% of the members (who should be playing off what are still archaically referred to as the 'ladies tees'). No. No. No, no, no.

And what is being done to arrest this decline in Scotland? Well, take a look around at all these lovely new golf courses being built. What do you mean, you can't? They won't let you in the gate, you say? They're not looking for people like you? All they want are the affluent minority who will buy a gaudy home in the expensive housing estates surrounding these high-end clubs? And they cost the earth to play anyway?

Oh well, there are other less time-consuming games where the equipment is cheaper and you can actually play with the kids. Anyone for tennis?

Cast Your Vote!

A pair of online surveys worth your time, the first on the lower right of ESPN.com's golf page asking if PGA Tour courses should "be set up to encourage low scores or protect par?" You can explain your thinking here and just maybe your comments will appear in Golf World.

As of this posting 299 votes have been cast and 74% say protect par. Apparently with all of the bad news surrounding Ambien the 74%ers are searching for sleeping pill alternatives.

Meanwhile Steve Elling is trying to decide who to vote into the World Golf Hall of Fame and is asking for reader suggestions.

NGF Response To NY Times: "Mortality/Infirmity – some of the infirm return to play another day"

National Golf Foundation Vice President Greg Nathan took issue with the recent New York Times front page article on the Americans giving up golf, and sent out an email to "friends and colleagues in the golf industry."

One of those friends forwarded his comments:

I’ve received a few inquiries regarding The New York Timespiece that appeared last Thursday (“More Americans Are Giving Up Golf”).  Since the article included National Golf Foundationdata to support the writer’s negative view on the state of golf participation, I wanted to make sure you had the straight story on the numbers, directly from me and the NGF.    
 
There were a number of factual errors in the story and the general perception may be that all the data and conclusions are completely consistent with the NGF's perspective. That is not the case, however, and the NGF has forwarded a correction to The New York Times.
 
To clarify a few things:
The article correctly cites our data showing that the number of Core golfers (those playing eight or more rounds per year) has fallen from 17.7 million in 2000 to 15 million in 2006. This drop is due, in large part, to golfers “on the cusp” who have reduced their play from eight or 10 or 12 rounds per year, to seven or less rounds, and thus are reclassified as Occasional vs. Core golfers.
 
While the reduction in core golfers presents a meaningful challenge to the growth of golf businesses, the damage to the industry is mitigated by the stability of overall U.S.rounds played.  Annual rounds have remained static at roughly 500 million over the past five years. So, effectively, the activity of the 28.7 million U.S.golfers is holding stable at approximately 17 rounds per year, on average.
 
I’m not sure where the writer found his data for avid golfers (those playing 25 or more rounds annually). These are not from the NGF, though many readers came away with the impression that we were the source.
 
Regarding attrition, the writer stated that “about three million golfers quit playing each year and slightly fewer than that have been picking it up.”  The NGF never discussed this topic with the writer. In a study we did a few years ago, we estimated that about three million golfers come into the game each year. Of these, half, or 1.5 million, are retained for at least one year and the other half try it, and then decide golf is not for them. Meanwhile, 1.5 million previously existing golfers leave the game for three main reasons:
 
Mortality/Infirmity – some of the infirm return to play another day

The mortality ones probably don't make it back another day.

Hiatus takers – they return later

That's why they call it a hiatus!

Quitters – they don’t return
Thus, there is a net gain of roughly 1.5 million newand a loss of 1.5 million existing golfers per year – resulting in little or no growth.
 
The article also states that the total number of golfers dropped from 30 million in 2000 to 26 million currently. This is not correct, and NGF did not provide these numbers to the writer. Our data shows that the number of total golfers actually increased from 28.1 million in 2000 to 28.7 million in 2006, an increase of approximately 2%.
 
The NGF's mission is to Help Golf Businesses Succeed.  Reporting the most accurate possible data to the industry is central to our efforts.  I hope this was a helpful clarification of the flat, yet stable participation we've experienced in recent years.  The results of the NGF's 2007 participation study are starting to come in and initial numbers are positive.  More to come on that in the spring.

Flat, yet stable. And the spring collection looks strong. Especially in Canada, as reader Patrick noted this Garth Woolsey article saying things are better north of the border.

Staying interested is another matter. But a Stats Canada study in 2005 established that among Canadians aged 15 or over, golf had the highest participation rate of all sports, at about 22 per cent (one of the highest in the sport among all nations), ahead of, in order, hockey, baseball, swimming, basketball, volleyball and soccer.