What are the most effective strategies for retaining and attracting young golfers?

Getting the price set at an appealing level will help get juniors and young adults to your venue. Your staff and venue also need to be welcoming of a younger demographic. No point attracting an audience only to be met with a stale and unwelcoming environment. Get the price right, the environment right and you are a long way towards building a youthful golf community. Having quality PGA professionals at your venue that are delivering cost effective group tuition will also be greatly beneficial. The golfers will improve and start to feel right at home. We need to remember that taking up golf as a beginner as a beginner is a daunting prospect! Let’s take those barriers to entry away.

Price Points The Economical Strategy To Attract Younger Golfers Golf clubs around me have slashed the price of junior membership in a bid to attract new life blood into their clubs. In addition to this they have ramped up junior golf programmes making sure that they offer weekend clinics on a regular basis for these youngsters just starting out. It is important to have frequent competitions for juniors at all levels and age groups to fire that competitive spirit within a nurturing framework. The attitudes of existing older members have changed over the last decade or so, as they have come to recognise individually the need for generational change if their clubs are going to survive. This is the future of golf – more kids playing the game.

Expanding Golf’s Appeal Beyond Wealthy White Kids Tiger Woods was important for golf for so many reasons, but his status in the game broke through that white bread exclusive country club image that golf had for too long. Golfers like Sahith Theegala and Hideki Matsuyama are attracting new legions of young golf fans to the sport from new demographic spectrums. Multi-cultural golf is a new beast in the jungle and the growth factor potential here is enormous. I think keeping the cost of golf down will, also, be important to the long term survival of golf’s popularity. Most stuff in golf is overpriced in my view. Let us remember that the essential nature of golf is hitting a stone with a stick outside.

Golf is a very frustrating game and is not an easy sport to play. There is no denying that swinging a club head on the end of a long pole at a small dimpled ball at speed and expecting it to travel where you want it to go is often a recipe for disaster. Laughing at yourself is a skill you soon learn to divine on your golfing journey. Technology has marketed itself as a game improver via the transforming nature of the materials utilised. Heads of golf clubs have got bigger thanks to the lighter weights of the materials . Shafts have become less twisty at impact due to the carbon fibres utilised. However, without proper guidance via professional instruction and practice the true potential of these amazing clubs is often left in the bag.

Golf is the many millions of ordinary golfers who play the game at their local course every week. Golf is the golf clubs, where member interact with each other in good spirit. Golf is the care for strips of land co-opted by clubs to maintain them as golf courses for the many millions of rounds of golf played upon them. Golf is the adherence to its etiquette and many rules by all those who deign to play the greatest game. Golf is all about integrity and not about material rewards for the vast majority who play the game. Golf is, I think, an almost ancient pastime in that it asks human beings to physically swing a club at a small ball amid the great outdoors.

High tech golf, also, attracts younger golfers via the many devices now available to measure distances and flight properties. Range finders were allowed for amateur players some 17 years ago by the USGA and R&A. This started an avalanche of different GPS devices measuring distances and communicating it to golfers hitting the market and showing up in golfer’s bags. Since then, the technology has evolved into launch monitors, big and small, measuring everything under the sun related to the golf swing and the movement of the struck golf ball. These are leading the way in the training aid category. Many younger golfers are enamoured of this gear. Technology is a major factor in the appeal of golf for young golfers in the 21C.

In many ways, it is all this shiny new equipment, which often attracts younger golfers to the game. Obviously, the association of a golf brand like Titleist or Ping with an Adam Scott or Viktor Hovland rubs star power upon their stuff. Club and social golfers wear the branded hats proudly on their heads to keep the sun off. New golfers to the game will be influenced by the equipment used by their golfing heroes. Thus, right there we see the importance of the sport at its elite tournament level maintaining prominence in that competitive market place. This relies on organisations like the USPGA and the European Tour, the USGA and the R&A, ensuring their products are seen on screens globally and making the news all the time.