It’s not all doom and gloom for the $84 billion-dollar golf industry. Nearly 40 percent of Americans (107 million, to be more precise) either played, read about, or watched golf in 2018, according to the National Golf Foundation’s 2019 Golf Industry Report.
The report also found that participation has stabilized. Gone are the crazy statistics of drop-out golfers. In fact, last year, participation rates climbed. The report credits this growth, in part, to “popular off-course forms of the game such as Topgolf, Drive Shack and indoor simulators.”
Since our children are our future, there is encouraging news in the number of young golfers taking up the sport.
“There were 2.5 million junior golfers last year [2018]” the report claims and “an estimated 2.6 million beginners (those who played on a golf course for the first time) in 2018, which is near record levels and marks the fifth straight year with over 2 million newcomers.”
It appears that it’s far too soon to call time-of-death for the game of golf and, by extension, the American golf course.