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Golf Industry's Demographic Dead-End by Steve Sailer UPI, December, 2003 |
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Fourth of a four part series The golf industry's sharp recession, with the number of rounds played so far in 2003 down 8 percent versus the peak year of 2000, raises long term questions about whether the game can expand beyond its white male demographic base. Despite the hopes that Tiger Woods could diversify golf's appeal, the industry grew less during its boom in the 1990s from increasing the number of players than from extracting more money from each devotee. Extravagant and therefore expensive new golf courses opened, with greens fees in Las Vegas averaging $144 by 2002. The rapid technological advances of manufacturers such as Callaway and Taylor Made encouraged golfers to buy new clubs frequently. According to the National Golf Foundation, the great leap forward in the number of players actually occurred between 1985 and 1990, when baby boomers, growing a little too old for contact sports swelled the ranks of golfers by 31 percent. Since 1990, however, the total is up only 14 percent. The number of people turning 30, an age at which golf starts seeming more sensible than basketball or mountain biking, has been in decline since the mid-1990s. It will turn upward toward the end of the decade, but that growth will be driven heavily by minorities. Woods' charisma alone hasn't been enough to convince numerous minorities to take up a game that is expensive, time-consuming, frustrating, loaded with unwritten rules of etiquette, and whose elite private courses were largely segregated until a 1990 scandal impelled tournament organizers to impose racial quotas on clubs hosting events. In fact, because golf carts have replaced caddies, the traditional route by which young African-Americans took up the game has largely disappeared. Thus, there are more black players on the Champions Tour for senior stars over 50 over than on the main PGA Tour, where only the multi-racial Woods claims African ancestry. The game, though, is not as "lily-white" as its critics often assume. About 15 percent of all golfers are minorities (versus 32 percent of the total population), and they play about 11 percent of all rounds. According to a 2003 World Golf Foundation study, 14.5 percent of whites play, versus 13.7 percent of Asian-Americans, 7.0 percent of African-Americans, and 5.4 percent of Hispanic-Americans. Income differences obviously play a role. Interestingly, though, among families with incomes over $100,000, participation rates are high for all races, ranging from 25 to 33 percent. Below $50,000, though, blacks and Hispanics are only half as likely as whites to play. One reason is that many less affluent whites live in rural regions where real estate -- and thus golf -- is cheap. In contrast, working class minorities tend to live in expensive urban areas. Due to the golf establishment's guilty conscience, more attention has been paid to increasing the number of black golfers, yet the larger and faster growing Hispanic population is even less likely to play. "One group clearly underrepresented in the golfer population is the Hispanic golfer. Very few golfers are of Hispanic descent," lamented the World Golf Foundation. A Scottish game, golf is most popular globally in the Anglosphere. In Latin America, it has traditionally been seen, like polo, as only for plutocrats. Three of the best-liked pro golfers of the 1970s and 1980s -- Lee Trevino, Chi-Chi Rodriguez, and Nancy Lopez -- were Hispanics Americans, but their popularity didn't attract many other Latinos. Ruffin Beckwith, executive director of Golf 20/20, told United Press International, "Women may represent the single most important demographic group for future growth, and much more has to be done to welcome women into the game and retain them." In response, the National Golf Course Owners Association has created a "Take Your Daughter to the Course Week" each July. About 23 percent of golfers are women, but they account for fewer rounds played. Research shows that most dedicated women golfers are the wives of male enthusiasts. Because so many are empty nesters, though, golf currently lacks the sex appeal that young women give a pastime. In the more class-conscious 1920s, rich young ladies swinging mashie-niblicks were common on the cover of Vogue and other women's magazines. Today, though, young women are more interested in more aerobic and toning forms of exercise. Golf has made very few inroads among black and Hispanic women. One bright spot on the horizon is that golf is fashionable among young Asian women, both here and abroad. Indeed, it's so popular that veteran Ladies Professional Golf Association star Jan Stephenson recently got herself in political hot water by calling for a quota to boost the shrinking number of American women on the American tour. (Stephenson is Australian.) The golf industry has high hopes that 14-year-old Michelle Wie, a long-hitting 6' tall Hawaiian schoolgirl, will provide the LPGA with its first Asian-American superstar, and that she can be a role model for young women of all races.
Steve Sailer (www.iSteve.com) is a columnist for VDARE.com.
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