Golf Industry Searching for Answers that Are Already There

By: Marino Parascenzo


The strange box arrived at the office one day. It was about 40 inches long and triangular in shape - the kind a golf club might be mailed in. The return address offered no hint of the contents. There was no promise that the contents would save my game and my sanity.

Much to my surprise, the box contained a baseball bat. For me? But I had not swung a baseball bat with intent in years, and I had long since lost interest in running out ground balls. But it turned out this was no ordinary baseball bat. This one had the head of a putter attached to the bottom. It was from one of those old Acushnet center-shafted, two-faced putters, the kind that lets you miss them righty or lefty.

But what was the purpose of this odd instrument?

Well, it seems the guy had invented a game, the popularity of which, his flyer assured me, was about to engulf the nation. It was a combination baseball bat and putter. The idea was, you toss up the golf ball and hit it. Down the fairway, you hope. It was like hitting fungoes. Then you go and keep doing it till you get on the green, and then you turn the bat nose-down and start putting.

I forget what he called his game or where he was going to play his U.S. Open.

The guy would have been right at home today. People all over the place are trying to think of ways to make golf fun again. That's because, as we know, golf is hurting. To summarize a bewildering storm of statistics on the subject: Golf peaked in 2000-01 with some 30 million golfers. That number has fallen to about 24 million. Even women and kids aren't buying it, and they were supposed to be two areas of great promise.

The National Golf Foundation, which charts such stuff, said in 2010 that female play had fallen by 23 percent, but worse, junior play by 35. It seems that even the First Tee program isn't getting far.

Translate all this into fewer rounds played, less equipment sold, etc., and you're talking about a lot of hurting.

If there is a single cause to the sag in golf, nobody's been able to identify it. But there have been some interesting suggestions for reviving the game. Two of the least of these surfaced recently.

One was the introduction of the 15-inch hole, a test run created by TaylorMade. Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose, TaylorMade endorsement stablemates - fresh from a disappointing Masters - made personal appearances to show how much easier it was to putt into 15-inch holes rather than the standard 4¼-inch holes. This had to be demonstrated? Well, OK, so it was a publicity thing. Were they wearing rubber noses and carrying Harpo Marx uu-gah horns?

It's been argued that this was the same thing as lowering the hoop from 10 feet to, say, 8 feet, to make basketball easier for little kids. Did they make the hoop 15 or 20 inches across? Actually, the kids already want to play the game. They just weren't strong enough yet. So you lower the hoop.

There's a smaller football, too. Not to entice kids into the game. They already want to play football. The small ball makes it possible, that's all. The difference is golf is trying to attract kids. I'm thinking that cheapening the game isn't the way to do it.

Then there's something called, so help me, Foot Golf. All these decades, people want to kill people who kick the ball. Now you're telling them go ahead and kick it? Well, it's a combination of soccer and golf.

Ted Bishop, the new president of the PGA of America, not only endorses the idea, he promotes it vigorously. He's introduced it at his course in Indiana. The idea is to entice people onto the golf course with a form of soccer, using a soccer ball. You kick it off the first tee, and you keep kicking it until you can roll it with your foot into a 20-inch hole.

The idea is that once these foot-golfers have gotten a taste of a golf course they'll want to take up the clubs and, voila, new golfers are born! Right.

There's even a league or something, with a dress code. You wear flat Hogan-type caps, knee-high argyle socks (the kind you think the Scots wear) and golf pants - plus-fours, I assume. Rubber noses and uu-gah horns are optional.

I'm not being fair. Actually, this is just a simple ruse, as forgivable as it is transparent. The idea is to make money off a golf course that's bleeding money from disuse. It's just a bit of entrepreneurship. Better this than a golf course growing wild, or worse, being plowed under. But the pretense seems a little embarrassing. Still, the Kardashians seem to be doing OK, right?

The war cry is "Grow the game!" Any number of ideas have been floated to this end.

Speed up play is good one. Who wants to take five or so hours to play a round? How about our role models - the PGA Tour players? Slow play is driving many of them to distraction. Commissioner Tim Finchem believes that a fine - say $2,500 - is a far more effective way to punish a slow player than, say, a one-shot penalty that could cost him, say, $100,000, Ryder Cup points, world ranking points, etc., etc.

Finchem is not a silly man. Enforcing a slow-play penalty might well bring on a palace rebellion. Finchem is quick enough to realize that.

In everyday golf, courses want faster play, the better to turn a faster buck. That's just what a guy wants after a day's work. He's an office guy and the boss has been hounding him to death. Or he's been at the operating table or in the courtroom. Or he's a cop or a fireman.

Now he can go to maybe his only refuge, where he can listen to the meadowlarks and smell the flowers, and his greatest stress is a 4-footer. And you want to chase him around the course? More likely you'll chase him off.

Of all the people who should know that the cost of golf is killing them are the manufacturers. So do they cut prices to boost sales? Naw. They boost the prices to try to make more off shrinking sales.

The May edition of the PGA Magazine shows you can get the latest Nike hybrid for $229 a copy, Cobra driver for $399, an Ogio golf bag for $240, and a set of Adidas shoes for $250. There - I've put you on the first tee for about $1,100. Not counting, of course, the rest of the clubs (maybe another $1,000), a dozen balls for $50-plus, the green fee, etc. To say nothing of a nifty dial-a-shot driver. You take this little wrench, and you dial in for launch angle, fade, draw, pitch, roll, yaw, knuckleball and maybe a cup of coffee, all yours for about $500.

On the other hand, you can get a decent rifle or shotgun for about $250, a box of shells for $20, a blaze orange vest for $50, and no $100 green fee or timed round.

The quiet joy of fishing can come even cheaper. Just the thing for an ex-golfer.

And all this should not be confused with golf viewing. The TV people whimper at the drop in ratings when Tiger Woods isn't on. They're crying about ad dollars. Woods has had a great impact on the watching of golf, but not on the playing of golf. The statistics tell us that.

Well, what's lost in all this mourning here is a notion advanced very neatly and intelligently not long ago by Peter Kostis of the CBS TV golf team - to the effect that golf is not basketball, baseball or football. Golf is not and never has been a sport for the masses. It's a niche sport. You've got to want golf. Golf is not dying, just settling back into its place. Unfortunately, it's hurting some areas, but it remains the greatest game ever.

It's a pity more don't enjoy the sheer pleasure of that one great shot that can be treasured, that occasional birdie.

I remember Steve, the guy who owned the little garage I always took my car to. He couldn't wait until Wednesday. He would knock off a little early, change out of his grubby work clothes, scrape most of the grease from under his fingernails, and head for the course, a little daily-fee track just outside of town. It was league night - 15 bucks for nine holes and a cart, followed by the post-mortems and a few cold ones. (That was four, five years ago. It's up to $18 now.)

With all due respect to Old Tom Morris, Augusta National and the U.S. Golf Association, Steve and millions like him are the soul of American golf. They're not trying to be Tiger or Phil or anybody else. They'd just love to break 40. Or 50.

Marino Parascenzo can assure you that hanging around with great and famous pro golfers does nothing to help your game. They just won't give you the secret. But it makes for a dandy career. As a sportswriter with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (now retired), Parascenzo covered the whole gamut of sports - Steelers, Pirates, Penguins, Pitt, Penn State and others - but golf was his favorite. As the beat writer for the paper, he covered all the stateside majors and numerous other pro events, and as a freelancer handled reporting duties for the British Open and other tournaments overseas - in Britain, Spain, Italy, the Caribbean, South Africa, China and Malayasia. Marino has won more than 20 national golf-writing awards, along with state and regional honors. He has received the Memorial Tournament's Golf Journalism Award and the PGA of America's Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines, among them Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, and in anthologies and foreign publications. He also wrote the history of Oakmont Country Club. Parascenzo is a former president of the Golf Writers Association of America and is on its board of directors. He is the founder and chairman of the GWAA's Journalism Scholarship Program. He is a graduate of Penn State and was an adjunct instructor in journalism at Pitt.