Golf 20/20 Hopes To Grow Number Of American Golfers To 30 Million

For stakeholders and those with an interest in various golf initiatives, check out Adam Schupak's lively give and take with Golf 20/20 honcho Steve Mona who reports a goal of increasing participation from 25.7 million to 30 million by the end of 2017.

They'll be doing it by backing just five initiatives, all no doubt with some glossy ad campaigns...

Q: One could argue it’s a mistake to only support industry-led initiatives. Aren’t these the same organizations that failed to grow the game since Golf 20/20 was created in 2000?

It doesn’t mean the other initiatives going on aren’t worthy initiatives. I can name a whole bunch, and they still will be supported. You look at a program like The First Tee that went from zero in 1997 to today more than 200 chapters and reached somewhere in the order of 6 million young people. We have a goal to reach an additional 10 million in the next five years. I would say that program has been successful from the standpoint of reaching young people, as an example. Get Golf Ready in 2012 reached 76,000 students, 80 percent of which have stayed in the game, spending incrementally another $1,000 in the game so I wouldn’t say that’s been unsuccessful.

Q: Yet the number of youth golfers (based on NGF data) has declined. The First Tee may have touched a lot of kids, but the NGF numbers don’t match up, do they?

Yes, the youth category has declined, but I think you have to look at broader, more societal issues rather than just say that youth golf is smaller today than it was five years ago it was The First Tee’s fault.

But one of the issues to that point, one of the problems we see with our sport is it doesn’t lend itself to a team sport environment. That’s why we’re getting behind PGA Junior League Golf. It creates that kind of team environment.