Is Worldwide Golf in Decline?

In looking back in time through corrective lenses, it seems like the demise of worldwide golf coincided approximately with the Tiger Woods’ injury, surgery and 10-month layoff. It didn’t take long for networks to realize anew that without Tiger in the field ratings would be down.

TV Ratings Do Not A Sport Make

If the NBA were the sole entity propping up the sport of basketball, we’d have seen the last of it many years ago, probably as early as the departures of Hondo, Dr. J and Pistol Pete. Thankfully though, basketball is adored by millions of children around the world; more and more everyday. Same goes for golf.

Take Tiger off the fairway, or far, far from the leader board (because if he is remotely close, he’s on TV) on Sunday afternoons and ratings go down. Sure. No question, but take a look around the world and there’s no doubt golf will survive without him when the day comes. There will be other stars that will take some of the limelight off him by then, but the sport will thrive without them, too.

The Tiger Impact

This isn’t a “beat up on Tiger” article. Not by a long-shot. It is meant to simply point out where the game is and where it’s headed. Worldwide golf would not be where it is today without Tiger. His success and impact can only be measured by the growth of the sport since 1997.

Golf would have expanded to children who had not played the game or even seen the game, but who knows when. Tiger rapidly changed that in 1997 with his Masters win, possibly before. The game was already expanding into Asia, but in recent years the pace has quickened. The Asian frontier is really what has been an enormous boon to the game. The possibilities are as endless as the population of China, and developers, architects, designers, and professionals from around the world are taking advantage, in the best meaning of the word, of the new golf frontier.

K.J. Choi, Y.E. Yang, Se Ri Pak, Ryo Ishikawa, Michelle Wei and several others are due a large amount of credit for spurring on the rise of Asian golf, in recent years, even more so than Tiger Woods.

Professional vs. Amateur

Nine out of ten times, regardless of the competitors (except, of course if one of them was Bobby Jones) a professional golfer will beat an amateur at golf. When it comes to growing the game, however, the amateur wins the competition every time. It is through and because of the amateur that manufacturers develop ever-improving equipment, that courses get built, that teaching pros get paid, that touring pros get paid, that the game grows. But, not all credit goes to either group. They’re inextricably linked. Without popularity of professionals, the game doesn’t grow as quickly, but it will grow. It always has.

There may be pockets of stagnation, like some have said has happened in the United States, but never has there been more exponential growth than we are experiencing right now. The best game ever invented, regardless of who thought it up, or who is currently the best, is growing so very fast. It is exciting to think of the talent that will be produced and from where the next Jones or Sorenstam, Ochoa or Nicklaus, Woods or Berg will come.

It’s likely that the next greats will have grown up on the courses of Mission Hills, China, or the Algarve in Spain and Portugal, or come from an unknown course in the Russian steppe. However, the growth of golf does not show any signs of slowing down on the global stage.