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Golf in the rough as boom ends

MILLIONS of viewers will tune into the Masters golf tournament this week. But though golf may be a growth sport for the couch potato, fewer people are swinging a club; write John Waples and James Hughes.

According to an authoritative new report from Golf Research, the golf boom is over. Club memberships are falling and joining fees are down by a third. The number of rounds played at municipal courses has fallen from an average 46,000 rounds at each course in 1995 to 34,000 rounds last year, a fall of 26%.

Private courses are feeling the pinch as well. The proportion of clubs with no joining fees has risen from 22% to 32%, and the average joining fee has fallen 42% to £251.

“Private clubs … have had to rethink their position with the rise in the number of golf clubs,” said Scott Jarvis, sales manager at the Belfry, a premier hotel and golf course. “They have become far more flexible with their prices.”

In America, says Colin Hegarty of Golf Research, club membership is down though Tiger Woods has lifted television viewing by 80%.

After years of expansion, the golf business finds itself in the rough.

MOST sports-involving, as they do, grown men and women kicking and throwing balls or each other-are basically preposterous. Golf is especially preposterous, since it consumes so much time and land (and therefore money). But because of these expenses, the popularity of golf says something about a country’s lifestyle and aspirations. In Britain, golf courses occupy more land than ever; but Britons are not spending as much time and money on them as developers had hoped.

As Mark Twain would see it, in the early 1990’s more and more good walks were spoiled. New golf courses were built across Britain, and, indeed, much of the rest of the world-in response, says, Colin Hegarty, of the Golf Research Group, to the ravenous golfing appetite aroused by television. The boom in the number of players in Britain in the 1980’s was also driven, Mr Hegarty says, by the success of the country’s golf idols in major tournaments. Most of the new British courses were commercial ventures, which compete both with the council-owned municipal courses (designed to bring golf to the masses) and the old-fashioned, membersonly clubs (designed to keep them out).

At the top end, the new commercial market looks secure. At Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, facilities include an 18th century manor house, a posh restaurant, and two courses; on one of them players take a ferry to the last green. New members currently have to lay Out £14,000 ($20,000); their stake can be sold if they leave (only to the right sort, of course). The manager isn’t sweating.

But, with total numbers flatlining, there are not enough new golfers to fill all the new fairways. Some less swanky developments, often the work of entrepreneurial farmers, have gone bust, to be snapped up by multinationals (though they too are feeling the pinch: Clubhaus, a listed company which owns courses in four countries, including 13 in Britain, is threatened by insolvency after writing-down its assets).

The number of rounds played at municipal courses has declined dramatically. Not far from Brocket Hall, at the less rarefied Stevenage municipal course (green fees: £16 at the weekend), the brewery that once ran the club-house has pulled out-though after several years of decline, says the manager, there has recently been an upturn.

The supply of new members to the older clubs has also begun to dry up. At a typical private members club nearby, the waiting list is shrinking. Other traditional clubs in the area have scrapped their joining fee altogether, just as, at many new ones, they are falling or disappearing.

Golf’s problems are due partly to the sport’s migration from terrestrial to satellite television: the audiences are smaller. And while Tiger Woods is photogenic, he is less of a draw for Britons than the homegrown champions of yore. Other explanations cited include the laziness of the young, the growing enthusiasm of the middle-aged for DIY and gardening, and low-cost airlines, which offer cheap access to Mediterranean courses.

Longer-term factors also explain why golf is becoming one of the many sports Britain has invented, exported, and now loses at. Block leisure time is sparse in a country that works such long hours. Men, who make up an especially high proportion of British golfers, are becoming less inclined (or allowed) to spend time away from their families.

And golf may not be quite the aspirational pursuit it used to be. Wray Vamplew, an expert on the history of golf at the University of Stirling, says that it was once the preserve of the upper-middle classes, who established their private clubs around the turn of the last century when land was cheap. In the yuppie boom of the 1980’s golf was one form of conspicuous consumption that appealed to the upwardly mobile. Now they are finding other ways to tell the world and themselves that they have arrived.

Of the millions of people who will be enthralled by today’s climax of the Open championship at Royal Lytham and St Annes many would not know a five iron from a croquet mallet.

However, they will all know Tiger Woods, the world’s top golfer, whose huge personal appeal has popularized the game in a way that lemon-and-grey diamond-checked sweaters never could.

In Britain, 3.75 million adults regularly play golf, but only a third are members of clubs affiliated to the golf unions of England, Scotland and Wales, where average annual membership costs £440. There are also joining fees, and sometimes green fees for each round.

According to the Golf Research Group, only a tenth of Britain’s courses are publicly owned, but they accounted for nearly 40 per cent of rounds played last year. However, there are signs that many private clubs are courting new members other than the stereotypical affluent, middle-aged, white male. Researcher Mintel found a growing interest among 15 to 19year olds, but many think private clubs are snobbish and costly.

Clubs are recognizing the need to engage younger players and many have scrapped joining fees and lowered subscriptions for juniors. The result has been a drift away from municipal courses, where rises in green fees have been higher than at private clubs in the past five years.

The result has been a drift away from municipal courses, where rises in green fees have been higher than at private clubs in the past five years.

More than 600 courses have been built since 1990, but only about five per cent of them are municipal. Some private clubs, including the Clubhaus chain, are attracting younger players by adding fitness centres. And as the likes of Nike have entered the golfwear market, image-conscious youngsters need not fear the Pringle sweater.