South Africa: US Bucking the Trend in the Worldwide Golf Industry - AllAfrica.com

Colin AnthonyJohannesburg

THERE is a rather odd tendency in the planetary human race of golf game game at the moment.

In the US, where the golf industry is by far the world's biggest, the game is in what can only be called a recession.

The figure of golf players is falling and courses of study are closing all over the country. Yet in the remainder of the world, particularly in developing countries, the game is flourishing.

Ever more than than golf game vacation spots are opening and more people are starting to play the game.

Two of the game's greats, Jack Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, are extensively involved in designing and developing courses. Gary Player Golf Course Design "has lent its expertness to nearly 200 courses of study of study across four continents", according to his website.

Nicklaus Design have got almost 100 courses under construction, and have already built 300 around the world.

Other superstar golf game players are quickly moving into this field, which is so moneymaking because the supply can't maintain up with the demand.

Many of the new developments are in the east -- as economic systems there turn and more than than people move into the middle- income bracket, more people are taking up the athletics once reserved for the rich.

The early "Asian Tigers" such as as Malaysia, Kingdom Of Thailand and South Korean Peninsula have already established golf industries that are growing. Now states such as as Republic Of India and People'S Republic Of China are producing more than golf players and edifice more courses.

The same is happening in SA. While the development of new golf game game courses of study have come up to a practical deadlock in Horse Opera Cape owed to an overly leery provincial government, in Gauteng it looks that every clip my telephone rings it's another selling individual promoting another new golf resort.

And everywhere I turn there are ever more than newcomers to the game. People I have got barely met inquire me if I can organise lessons or quiz me on the elaboratenesses of becoming a member of a golf game club.

Why, then, is involvement in the game in the United States falling away? And is it a cause for concern here in SA?

Some of the grounds doing the units of ammunition include the length of clip it takes to play, plus the fact that courses of study necessitate tons of H2O and are so expensive to maintain.

Yet I believe there are other reasons, 1s which are not inherently a job for golf game game as an industry -- after all the game have been played for 100s of old age and will go on to be played for 100s of years.

First, it have to be remembered that when Tiger Forest hit the scene, he attracted a huge figure of new golf fans, especially in the US, and many tested to go golf players themselves.

Around the same clip the United States was experiencing one of its longer time periods of economical growth. Many people who could not afford it previously suddenly had money and signed up.

The coming of the golf game vacation spot also brought a inundation of new golfers. Non-golfers bought into the life style facet of such as vacation spots and decided they might as well play the bloody game since they lived in a golf game resort.

In other words, around the clip Tiger explosion on to the scene with his first Major triumph in 1997, there was a golfing roar in the US. That industry is now going through its "bust" period.

All those new players, watching Tiger Forest on television devising the game expression so easy; all those newly moneyed, thinking they should play the "rich man's sport". It was a lucifer made in heaven, or so they thought.

What they hadn't realised was quite how hard it is to larn to play this game.

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For a few lucky beginners, it looks to come up easily and naturally (and may their fingers turn into fishhooks and their axillas scabies forever). For most, it is a struggle. First, just getting the ball up into the air looks to be inordinately difficult. Once this deed is achieved, however, they begin realising the game just acquires more than than confusing and infuriating the more you learn; and they raise the achromatic flag of surrender, probably after slicing their umpteenth ProV1 into water.

To go a regular golf player with a respectable disability takes old age of battle and practice. It is only those who truly fall in love with the game who maintain at it.

Anthony is golf game correspondent.