Striving to make golf more user friendly

There is not a week goes by when someone isn’t bemoaning the state of golf.

Whether it is slow play, environmental impact, prohibitive costs, intimidating courses or simply John Daly’s latest pair of trousers, there will be somebody, somewhere, telling us golf is going to hell in a handcart.

While many moan, others seek to take action and in Dublin today Pádraig Harrington will help deliver a development plan for the future of golf in Ireland on behalf of the Confederation of Golf in Ireland (CGI), the umbrella organisation created last year by the Golfing Union of Ireland (GUI), the Irish Ladies Golf Union (ILGU) and the Professional Golfers Association (PGA).

And while Harrington outlines the CGI’s 2020 Strategy Vision for the sport on the island of Ireland, others are working to arrest the game’s decline in the US, where their National Golf Foundation, according to the New York Times, calculates five million players have been lost in the last 10 years, with the trend set to continue.

Something needs to be done and many leaders in the game are advocating radical change to the sport and its conservative image.

“We’ve got to stop scaring people away from golf by telling them there is only one way to play the game and it includes these specific guidelines,” PGA of American president Ted Bishop told the New York Times last month in an article that focused on a form of the game which uses holes that are 15 inches wide as a means of providing a pathway for children, in particular, to get involved with the more conventional game where the hole is around four times smaller.

The last time anything dropped down a hole that big, Alice went after the white rabbit and ended up in Wonderland, but Sergio Garcia believes similar results could be produced by golf with targets the size of a large family-sized pizza.

“A 15-inch hole could help junior golfers, beginner golfers and older golfers score better, play faster and like golf more,” Garcia said, having participated in an exhibition of 15-inch-hole golf.

The suggestions for making golf more accessible are wide-ranging, from allowing second-chance mulligans, one per hole, encouraging six- or nine-hole rounds and charging golfers green fees based on minutes playing rather than per round.

Bishop’s PGA of America, which represents more than 27,000 golf professionals in the US, has formed a 10-person working group to look at less traditional gateways to the game and refreshingly, has sought members from outside the game, including Olympic downhill skier Bode Miller, whose own sport suffered from more than a whiff of elitism before equipment changes and such measures were brought in.

GUI national coach Neil Manchip welcomes a fresh look at encouraging increased participation but leans towards smaller courses rather than the bigger holes being proposed Stateside.

“It’s all perspective. I think what we do for beginners and kids especially, clubs to fit them are really important, so they’re not too big and heavy and difficult to manage.

“I look at my own son, playing rugby and Gaelic, they have smaller footballs, smaller pitches for underage players and smaller golf courses are a brilliant idea for starting off. They’re not playing off men’s tees or even the ladies’ tees but half the distance again. Make it a small golf course and it gives kids a good perspective.

“Fifteen inches (for a hole) is really dramatic, though, it takes putting totally out of the equation. The hole is already a lot bigger than the ball. It may not seem that way if we’re struggling but it’s certainly much bigger than the ball.

“We have gone the other way with our elite players and have smaller holes in our short-game area to the ones they normally play to.

“For beginners, though, I think it’s more to do with the convenience and cost. People want to play games and as long as there are no barriers to participation, which in golf are commonly the cost and the barriers made by golf clubs, ie. kids are too young to play or it’s made too difficult for them to play, they’re given a half-hour slot here and there.

“Golf coaches can make things difficult, complicate things and make people go through a whole list of things before they can hit the ball, whereas if people can learn through having a bit of fun, how to use the tools involved, the club and the ball, the coaches can surely have a big bearing.”

Manchip offers plenty of food for thought and if nothing else, the subject of bigger targets is already widening the debate about what golf is doing to encourage new players, even if we don’t end up widening the holes.