Golf Is Dead Files: A Decent Read (For A Change)

I hate to start the weekend off with a negative piece about the game, but Karl Taro Greenfeld in Men's Journal (thanks reader Lee) has talked to a lot of interesting people, visited closed courses and fleshed out some key facts. While "The Death Of Golf" headline is a bit strong if you read the entire piece, that's merely the work of a headline writer.

Unlike many of the recent golf-is-dead stories, Taro Greenfeld likes the game and has a daughter who is intrigued, but the time and difficulty issue is at the core of his examination, and he gives plenty of time to the development model of the 80s and 90s which left us with no shortage of bad, long, unsatisfying courses.

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."

And this...

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."

Taro Greenfeld isn't all gloom and doom, visiting a TopGolf and examining its appeal.