Not everyone wants to “grow the game”

A few years back the various golf associations in Canada – RCGA, NGCOA, CPGA, CGSA, CSCM, CGIA and the Canadian Tour – got together and formed another association called NAGA – National Allied Golf Associations, sort of the mother of all associations. The purpose of NAGA was to find new ways to grow the game of golf in Canada and to ensure that the various individual associations weren’t running conflicting programs. Out of NAGA sprang a program called Play Golf Canada.

I was invited to sit on the Play Golf Advisory Committee as a representative of the Golf Journalists Association of Canada (GJAC) and attended my first meeting last week during the Canadian Open. Since then I have spoken to a lot of public players and private club members and while there is a massive laundry list of ideas about how to make golf better, there are two recurring messages: make golf more affordable and play faster.

However when people focus solely on the concept of growing the game, the message gets fuzzier. For instance, one player I know quite well explained that he was all for introducing golf to more kids, women, minorities etc but certainly didn’t like the idea of a foursome of giggling thirteen year old girls in front of him every time he played. Another player was also supportive of the concept but hoped it wouldn’t affect his access to the tee. As he explains, right now it’s a buyers market in Southern Ontario and anything that clogs the system can only diminish the experience for local golfers.

There’s obviously a larger conceptual issue in ensuring the long term viability of golf in Canada but to many people the idea of growing the game is like protecting the environment – it’s the right and proper thing to do, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience me.

As Play Golf Canada and the NAGA members introduce programs intended to attract more people to the game it will be interesting to see how much support they get at the consumer level and the grass roots level within the golf industry. Most of us in the industry understand the need for managed growth but I’m not sure that message will be palatable to a lot of existing golfers.