worth reading A Solution to One of Golf's Big Problems?

Here's what the Wall Street Journal calls "the scariest number for the golf business," and it comes from the National Golf Foundation's most recent report on golf participation: between 2005 and 2008, the number of U.S. golfers aged 6 to 17 declined by 24 percent, from 3.8 million to 2.9 million.

Yes, while celebrity architects and PGA Tour officials roam the world to "grow the game," the game of golf is dying here at home -- and has been for years.

Matthew Futterman of the Journal addresses this issue in "Golf's Big Problem: No Kids." He recommends that golf take a cue from tennis, which is experiencing a revival among children. From 2003 to 2009, Futterman says, the number of U.S. children aged 6 to 17 playing tennis increased from 6.8 million to 9.5 million.

Why is tennis flourishing while golf languishes?

Because the people who run tennis made their game "easier to learn and easier to stick with," Futterman writes. And they did it with solutions that "were so simple and inexpensive that in retrospect it seems downright silly that no one had pursued them before."

"When it comes to kids," Futterman concludes, "tennis clearly knows something that golf does not."

Here's a link to "Golf's Big Problem: No Kids."