Golf Business Can't Keep Up With the Demand : Leisure: Developers, tourism groups, golf schools and clothing manufacturers are seeking a share of this $20-billion domestic industry.

L.A. Times Archives

Nov. 9, 1989 12 AM PT

From Associated Press

GOLF, Fla. — Afternoons in the little village of Golf are lulled by the soft hum of electric carts and the pleasant snap of a good tee shot.

Not far beyond the back nine, however, the sounds change: trees cracking under diesel bulldozers and hammers banging out another clubhouse.

These are the rhythms of golf in recent years, reflecting a dramatic surge in the sport’s popularity that has spurred a boom in new golf courses and country club-style housing tracts around the nation, led by Sunbelt states such as Florida, Texas and South Carolina.

Meanwhile, tourism groups, golf schools and clothing manufacturers are seeking a share of the $20-billion domestic industry.

The 32-year-old community of Golf, homesteaded in lonely woodlands southwest of West Palm Beach as one of the nation’s first golf-oriented developments, is now surrounded by new courses and billboards promising more.

“Now they call this area Golf Lane,” said John Mosher, manager of the 131-home village that surrounds an 18-hole course. “It’s like they can’t build enough courses.”

Actually, they may fall considerably short of demand, the National Golf Foundation says.

The Jupiter, Fla.,-based trade group predicts that nearly 4,000 new courses may be necessary by the end of the century to accommodate the burgeoning number of players, from hackers to tournament professionals.

“That’s about one every day from now on during the entire next decade,” said foundation spokeswoman Kit Bradshaw, who noted that 320 new courses have been built since 1987, with about the same number either proposed or under construction.

An estimated 23.4 million golfers are whacking golf balls at about 13,630 United States courses--an average of about 3,700 golfers for every 18 holes--and their ranks could reach 30 million to 40 million by the year 2000 at present growth rates. In 1980, 15.1-million golfers played on 12,800 courses.

Florida, which leads the nation with 932 courses, is also No. 1 in planned new golf courses with 53. California, New York and Texas have more than 750 courses each.

The age of golf as the exclusive pastime of the rich ended in the 1960s as golfer Arnold Palmer rose from a modest background in Pennsylvania to become a legend in the sport, said John Rooney, a professor of geography at Oklahoma State University and author of several books on sport and leisure.

“That’s when more blue-collar and factory workers started to play,” he said.

Golf, however, ranks in the bottom half of the 20 most popular sports or activities, the National Sporting Goods Assn. reported in September.

Swimming was enjoyed by 71.1 million people, followed by exercise walking and bicycling.

But the golf foundation noted that nearly half the players are younger than 40 years old, with the average age 38.1, and may drop other sports as they age. Also, less than a quarter of all U.S. golfers are women, and their numbers may grow in coming years.

“Baby boomers are moving into middle age and taking up a sport that isn’t so physically demanding,” said Thomas Dorsel, a sports psychologist at Francis Marion College in Florence, S.C.

“I’d also like to think that they are starting to recognize the almost philosophical aspect of the game. Golf parallels life in so many ways, and it may appeal to people more when they enter a more philosophical stage of their life.”

Yet it still takes cash--and a willingness to part with it--to hit the links.

Sales of clubs and balls have jumped 53% since 1984 to $963 million last year, according to the sporting goods association. Golf apparel manufacturers sold about $270 million in merchandise to retailers last year, the Sportswear Manufacturers Assn. reported.

Hefty sums may also be paid to learn to swing the costly clubs.

“Money is not the question with many of our guests. The objective is to learn the game of golf,” said Fred Griffin, director of the 3-year-old Grand Cypress Academy of Golf in Orlando.

For up to $3,000 for a five-day stay, students have access to a medical team, including a psychologist, optics and muscle experts and an orthopedic surgeon. On a special practice tee, a computerized video unit analyzes golf swings for flaws.

The system records the student’s swing, then superimposes a computer graphics model of the stroke of a famous professional golfer, such as Jack Nicklaus or Palmer.

“It’s the only one like it,” said Griffin. “It’s things like this that people are willing to pay for.”

Courses, too, are now making special efforts to attract out-of-town golfers, who spent about $7.8 billion last year on travel and lodging.

Consortiums of courses in areas such as Myrtle Beach, S.C., Arizona and the Great Smoky Mountains now offer charter golf vacations. Some tours even provide putting greens at the airport.

Other tours are specifically aimed at the estimated 13.6-million Japanese golfers who often pay dearly for a membership to one of that nation’s 1,600 courses.

In Europe, a “golf summit” earlier this month in West Germany examined the growing crowds at courses from Spain to Sweden. Canada is scheduled to hold its first golf conference in December in Toronto.

“We’re already seeing what happens when there are too many golfers and too few courses,” National Golf Foundation spokeswoman Bradshaw said.

Despite forecasts of continued growth, she warned that the United States golf boom could be suffocated by the early 1990s unless more municipal courses are built.

“If it starts taking six hours to play a round because of overcrowded courses, that’s when people are just going to say, ‘forget it,’ and put away their clubs.”