Patrick Harverson explains why a young American may lift the flagging fortunes of the sport.
When a young and rather talented American golfer tees off at a specially-designed course in Hyde Park today for an exhibition charity game, the UK will see the start of “Tigermania”.
It is Eldrick “Tiger” Woods’s first public appearance in London and the speed with which the 5,000 tickets for the event were snapped up last week suggests the Open champion’s pulling power is as strong in the UK as in the US, where he is the country’s biggest sporting superstar.
The question is: can his popularity help boost the flagging UK golf industry, the same way he has helped the sport grow in the US?
Colin Hegarty of the Golf Research Group says the signs are promising. “For the past decade the needle has been stuck at just over 3m golfers,” he explains.
“Over the same period, there has been a 28 per cent increase in golf courses. The paradox is, we did some research into non-golfers and found the extraordinary result that there are 7.5m people in the UK who really want to play golf.”
Unfortunately, people in the UK are put off by the perception that golf is expensive, difficult to learn, and socially exclusive. In the US, the game is more egalitarian and more affordable.
Charlie Parker, managing director of Clubhaus, the quoted golf and country club group, says the industry is working hard to attract players. “The number of people wanting to join our clubs has increased dramatically over the last couple of years,” he says. “And prices have not moved a lot, so golf is becoming relatively less expensive.”
Mr Parker attributes some of the growth to the Woods phenomenon: “He has been about how exciting golf now looks and how more accessible it appears to be.”
Clubhaus’s strategy with its 22 courses has been to attract whole families rather than just men by building health and fitness club facilities alongside its golf courses. The concept appears to be working because this summer it reported a 24 per cent increase in half-year profits to £5.1m on turnover of £19m.
Mr Hegarty agrees women golfers are a key growth sector in the market. “Only 7 per cent of golfers in England are women, the lowest percentage of any European country. In the US the figure is 23 per cent. There is tremendous potential here, and our research shows that women want to play as much as men.”
The problem for the sport has been its failure to get the message across to aspiring golfers that the game has become more accessible.
“The golf industry needs a national marketing campaign, like other industries, where they focus on growing the pie,” says Mr Hegarty. At the moment, course owners are too busy trying to win business from each other.
Ultimately, attracting demand to fill the plentiful supply is the biggest challenge facing UK course owners.
“There has been a boom in golf courses but not in golfers,” says Mr Hegarty. “But there has been a boom in public interest in golf – the TV ratings for the sport are way up. Tiger is an incredible opportunity for the golf industry, they’ve just got to take it.”
The other big multi-course owner in the UK adopts a different approach: it keeps its focus purely on golf. American Golf (UK), a subsidiary of American Golf Corporation, the world’s largest course owner and operator, has been on a spending spree in the past few years.
“We have more than doubled the size of the company in the last 20 months, and we want to do that again in the next two years,” says Geary Leathers, American Golf’s managing director in the UK.
The company now owns 21 courses – ranging from pay-to-play municipals to expensive private members clubs – and it has ambitious expansion plans. “Our goal is to have 50 courses in England by 2003,” says Mr Leathers.
That ambition will come at a price. By 2003, the company will have invested about £100m in UK golf courses. But the investment has paid off: American Golf UK’s annual turnover has quadrupled in the past four years to about £33m, and it is consistently profitable.
It is also focusing hard on growth, particularly among women golfers. When American Golf held a special women’s day at its courses this year, more than 2,000 attended, almost all beginners.
Mr Hegarty agrees women golfers are a key growth sector in the market. “Only 7 per cent of golfers in England are women, the lowest percentage of any European country. In the US the figure is 23 per cent. There is tremendous potential here, and our research shows that women want to play as much as men.”
The problem for the sport has been its failure to get the message across to aspiring golfers that the game has become more accessible.
“The golf industry needs a national marketing campaign, like other industries, where they focus on growing the pie,” says Mr Hegarty. At the moment, course owners are too busy trying to win business from each other.
Ultimately, attracting demand to fill the plentiful supply is the biggest challenge facing UK course owners.
“There has been a boom in golf courses but not in golfers,” says Mr Hegarty. “But there has been a boom in public interest in golf – the TV ratings for the sport are way up. Tiger is an incredible opportunity for the golf industry, they’ve just got to take it.”
Mr Hegarty agrees women golfers are a key growth sector in the market. “Only 7 per cent of golfers in England are women, the lowest percentage of any European country. In the US the figure is 23 per cent. There is tremendous potential here, and our research shows that women want to play as much as men.”
The problem for the sport has been its failure to get the message across to aspiring golfers that the game has become more accessible.
“The golf industry needs a national marketing campaign, like other industries, where they focus on growing the pie,” says Mr Hegarty. At the moment, course owners are too busy trying to win business from each other.
Ultimately, attracting demand to fill the plentiful supply is the biggest challenge facing UK course owners.
“There has been a boom in golf courses but not in golfers,” says Mr Hegarty. “But there has been a boom in public interest in golf – the TV ratings for the sport are way up. Tiger is an incredible opportunity for the golf industry, they’ve just got to take it.”