Diggin’ Our Niche

By Ed Mate

In ten years, golf will look much like it does now; and that will continue to make it great. By Ed Mate

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Four years ago, I attended a golf industry meeting where Joe Beditz, president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation (NGF) spoke about the state of the game. After his presentation I asked him this question: if golf were a patient being admitted into a hospital today, how would you classify its condition: grave, critical, life-support?

Without hesitation, Joe's answer was “stable.”

His reply surprised me. This was 2008 after all, a time when the housing bubble burst, the mortgage crisis had the country in all-out panic mode and the golf industry, an industry that rode the coattails of the housing and mortgage boom, seemed to be at ground zero of the collapse.

Why stable? Joe reminded me that golf has been, and will likely always be, a niche sport loved and adored by an incredibly stable socioeconomic strata (an affluent 10 to 12 percent of the overall population) who would sooner give up their left-lung than the game of golf. Joe reminded me that every market ebbs and flows and that the current oversupply of courses would correct itself over time. His comments were a welcome relief to the “deer in the headlights” mentality that dominated the mood of the industry then and are, in my opinion (as well as Joe's) equally accurate and germane today.

While the fear of 2008 has subsided, the golf industry seems to have settled into a mid-life crisis. The conservative and reliable spouse that was once golf is now thinking about getting a tattoo and buying a Harley. The staid traditions of the game of golf are now viewed as boring, too slow and out of touch with the high-tech, “that's-so-15-seconds-ago” mentality that permeates today's culture. A sport that historically attracted players on the basis of its inherent challenges is now dominated by equipment manufacturer's promises of “forgiveness.”

This paradigm shift is most evident in the area of junior golf. Yesterday's junior golfer thought that hanging around older people was cool, learning to play a difficult game was fun and rewarding, and being outside was a welcome relief from school.

Today's junior golfer doesn't want to be around boring old people, defines challenge and adversity as getting to level 12 on Angry Birds and thinks riding in a car without air-conditioning is child abuse. But even more important than the mindset of our children is the power and control they wield over the decisions of their parents.

Ward Cleaver is dead, “The Beaver” is nearing retirement and “The Beaver's” son is driving eight screaming 11-year old girls to a Taylor Swift concert. Is it the game's fault that today's kids don't bond with golf? Should the game change to reach out to families who are so overscheduled that a four-hour round of golf constitutes a family reunion?

These questions are particularly pertinent to the Colorado Golf Association (CGA). The CGA was formed in 1915 to promote and serve the best interests and true spirit of golf in the state of Colorado, or, as we say, to “keep the game you love the game you love.” As Executive Director of the CGA, I consider it my professional obligation to preserve the traditions of the game; and as someone who grew up as a caddie, I consider it my personal obligation to pass along these traditions to my children and some day to my children's children. For nearly 100 years the CGA has conducted state championships, administered the statewide handicap system, served as the local authority on the Rules of Golf and Amateur Status, promoted caddie programs and the Evans Caddie Scholarship, and otherwise represented the honorable traditions of the game. At the very core of these traditions is the philosophy that golf, like life, is not easy. Golf, like life, is not fair. But if you play by the Rules and do the right thing, you will be rewarded with the knowledge that you withstood the test.

So what does Joe Beditz of the NGF say today? Guess what, same answer “stable.” The gross oversupply of golf courses is slowly thawing (for the sixth straight year golf course construction had “net negative” growth (i.e. more courses closed than opened), participation has stabilized and the NGF predicts slow steady growth in participation as the economy improves.

Golf is a great game. Golf has stood the test of time. The biggest risk we face isn't doing nothing; it is changing a great game to accommodate the 90 percent of the population that has never connected with the sport.

“Golf develops the good qualities of man's nature and softens the poor ones,” the venerable Walter Travis wrote more than a century ago. “It is a developer and builder of character without peer. It is a leveler of rank and class, where rich and poor meet on common ground. It cultivates patience and endurance under adversity and yet keeps alive the fires of hope.”

It is these qualities that make golf great and that allow it to endure. The game is stable because it was built on the bedrock of these traditions. Now is not the time to change them; it is the time to celebrate and embrace them. Yes, certain golf “traditions” of elitism, snobbery and plain old discrimination need to go the way of the feathery, and it's taken a century of social and economic progress for the game to become the “great leveler” Travis described. But the basic fabric of a game that doesn't see color, age, gender or physical limitation (an individual pursuit of golfer versus self and player versus course; and the rewards that come from sticking with a very difficult, time intensive, and, yes, often frustrating game) shouldn't be messed with.

Oh, and by the way, your smartphone can't download a perfectly struck drive or a walk up the 18th fairway with your granddaughter. There's no app for that.

Ed Mate has been the Executive Director of the Colorado Golf Association since 2000, and has been a part of the CGA as a junior player, caddie, Evans Scholar and summer intern for many years before that. He serves on the Board of Trustees for The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch and previously worked as the Tournament Director for the Colorado Section of the PGA of America.