Vital Signs, november 20, 2015

     The National Golf Foundation has counted the golf facilities in Asia, and last month the Jupiter, Florida-based trade group published a list of the nations with the most courses. The top five: Japan (2,374), China (469), South Korea (441), India (266), and Thailand (248).

     Regarding those golf courses in South Korea: Some of them aren’t paying their taxes. Joongang Daily reports that government officials have discovered a golf-related “tax discrepancy” of ₩83.7 billion (about $72 million). The courses aren’t making their payments, the newspaper says, because they’re experiencing a “decline in customers, which has hurt their finances.” If you’re thinking that the decline can be explained in terms of supply and demand, try these numbers on for size: Between 2005 and 2014, the number of golf courses in South Korea increased by 115 percent, while the number of golfers increased by only 68 percent.

     Japan’s golf business is also hurting. Since the early 1990s, says Bloomberg, the industry “has suffered a steady decline,” with the number of golfers falling by 30 percent. “There’s a sense of crisis,” the chairman of the Professional Golfers’ Association of Japan told the news service. “There’s no doubt the market is shrinking.” Bloomberg did manage to find evidence of growth, but it’s not the kind that bodes well for the future: Over the past decade, the number of golfers aged 70 and over in Japan has increased by 1 million.

     A parade of “signature” golf architects has begun to make its way to Vietnam, and the Financial Times reports that the number of resident golfers in the nation now exceeds the number of golf tourists who annually come through the turnstiles. The score: 10,000 to 7,000. If this count is accurate -- and, for what it’s worth, a Chinese news service published the same number in 2013 -- then the nation should be congratulated for doubling the golf population it had in 1975, when the Vietnam War ended. And let’s keep this achievement in perspective: You can find more than 10,000 golfers in the Villages, Florida or Sun City, Arizona.

     How much tourist traffic can two destination-worthy golf courses generate for a remote island located south of Melbourne, Australia? The numbers are still speculative, but King Island, part of the state of Tasmania, could more than double the 5,000 to 7,000 visitors that it welcomed last year when the much-anticipated new links -- Cape Wickham Golf Course and Ocean Dunes -- find their groove. Not all of the visitors will be golfers, to be sure, but Cape Wickham, which opened several weeks ago, has already taken 4,000 reservations, and the owners of Ocean Dunes, which is scheduled to debut its full 18 holes in early 2016, expect to ring up 8,000 rounds a year. What’s more, there’s an additional benefit that may accrue to King Island: The International Association of Golf Tour Operators has named Tasmania as 2015’s “undiscovered golf destination,” a designation that will most likely mean something to somebody.

     Believe it or not, cynicism has begun to creep into U.S. politics. According to the Orlando Sentinel, an elected official in Orange County, Florida thinks that the owners of some golf courses in her jurisdiction might be deliberately “allowing their sprawling properties to fail” in an effort “to improve their prospects for redeveloping the acres into condos, shopping plazas, or something else more lucrative than golf.” Full disclosure: Similar thoughts have occasionally crossed my mind as well. When they do, however, I always tell myself that the owners of these struggling properties are probably just incompetent when it comes to golf operations. Either way, though, in the vast majority of cases they’re headed for a nice payday.