The Week That Was, may 3, 2015

     People have soured on golf, it’s often said, because the game is too time-consuming, too expensive, and too difficult. So how does one explain the results of the R&A’s just-released pace-of-play survey, which has determined that time, cost, and difficulty rank relatively low as factors that inhibit play? The respondents to the R&A’s investigation cited their jobs (34 percent) and family obligations (29 percent) as the top reasons that prevent them from playing, with the length of time required to complete a round finishing a distant third (16 percent). Cost (7 percent) and difficulty (1 percent) ranked fifth and sixth on the list, after a response the R&A calls “alternative hobbies.” (Translation: “Better things to do.”) It’s worth noting that the R&A received 56,248 responses to its survey, most of them, the group says, from people who play once or twice a week. Since the respondents tend to be people who are obviously devoted to golf, is it any wonder that 70 percent of them claim to be “generally happy” with the amount of time it takes to play a round?

     Just weeks after releasing a report on development opportunities along Europe’s Mediterranean coasts, KPMG’s Golf Advisory Practice has published a similar overview on the state of golf in the Caribbean. Golf participation in the Caribbean increased by 7 percent between 2011 and 2014, according to KPMG, but that number needs to be put in context. Bermuda has the region’s highest participation rate (an underwhelming 3.86 percent), and no other nation can claim a participation rate of even 0.5 percent. Heck, there are only 18,827 total “registered” golfers in the seven nations that KPMG has studied, and more than half of them (10,353) are in the Dominican Republic. KPMG counts nine courses “under development” in the Caribbean and another 21 “at the planning stage,” but they’ll cater to tourists, not to local golfers.

     The “Open Doctor” has identified three hot spots for golf development. Rees Jones recently told Golf Course Architecture that “we’re going to see lots of activity in the Bahamas,” that “Mexico is starting to pop a little more,” and that “the Japanese golf business is surprisingly busy right now.”

     Gifts of Gab: Communist Party leaders in China may not fully appreciate the addictive power of golf. “Like fine liquor and tobacco, fancy cars and mansions, golf is a public-relations tool that businessmen use to hook officials,” the party’s anti-graft newspaper has warned. “The golf course is gradually changing into a muddy field where they trade money for power.” Of course, such alarms are likely to become the Reefer Madness of the People’s Republic. China’s golf industry couldn’t ask for a better advertisement.