In a Hole, Golf Considers Digging a Wider One
By BILL PENNINGTON, NYT
APRIL 18, 2014
GREENSBORO, Ga. — Golf holes the size of pizzas. Soccer balls on the back nine. A mulligan on every hole.
These are some of the measures — some would say gimmicks — that golf courses across the country have experimented with to stop people from quitting the game.
Golf has always reveled in its standards and rich tradition. But increasingly a victim of its own image and hidebound ways, golf has lost five million players in the last decade, according to the National Golf Foundation, with 20 percent of the existing 25 million golfers apt to quit in the next few years.
People under 35 have especially spurned the game, saying it takes too long to play, is too difficult to learn and has too many tiresome rules.
Many of golf’s leaders are so convinced the sport is in danger of following the baby boomer generation into the grave that an internal rebellion has led to alternative forms of golf with new equipment, new rules and radical changes to courses. The goal is to alter the game’s reputation in order to recruit lapsed golfers and a younger demographic.
(More here.)
APRIL 18, 2014
GREENSBORO, Ga. — Golf holes the size of pizzas. Soccer balls on the back nine. A mulligan on every hole.
These are some of the measures — some would say gimmicks — that golf courses across the country have experimented with to stop people from quitting the game.
Golf has always reveled in its standards and rich tradition. But increasingly a victim of its own image and hidebound ways, golf has lost five million players in the last decade, according to the National Golf Foundation, with 20 percent of the existing 25 million golfers apt to quit in the next few years.
People under 35 have especially spurned the game, saying it takes too long to play, is too difficult to learn and has too many tiresome rules.
Many of golf’s leaders are so convinced the sport is in danger of following the baby boomer generation into the grave that an internal rebellion has led to alternative forms of golf with new equipment, new rules and radical changes to courses. The goal is to alter the game’s reputation in order to recruit lapsed golfers and a younger demographic.
(More here.)
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