I’ve noticed a lot of local clubs offering massively discounted membership fees. I’ve also noticed very few players out on the fairways and greens. I know it’s winter now but I noticed the same thing during our thermonuclear summer.

One particular club is offering memberships from £250. Back in the mid nineties, the same club was charging £800 and had a two year+ waiting list.

Is this peculiar to my locale or have others noticed similar?

Cutbacks in company perks I would expect.

All they need to do is convert to a bike park and people would pay the fees.
better use of the land too

Get a bike and do some real excersise.

Yep golf clubs are suffering, they over-expanded in the 90s and early 2000s on the back of interest in Tiger Woods.
Golf is too elitist and a very hard game to play, a new place has opened up near me with things like golf football to try and rekindle interest in the game, but I think it’s golden era is over.
Lots of golf courses will be turned into housing estates.

2016 figures but 1.5 million is still quite a lot. And the estimate is from an org that wants to up the numbers, clearly.

There are an estimated 1.5 million adult golfers in the UK who play at least once a week, almost twice the regular participation rate of tennis (825,343) or badminton (825,962), and 3.9 million adult golfers who play at least once a year.

https://www.randa.org/News/2016/03/UK-golfers-spend-4-billion-a-year-on-their-sport-and-the-golf-industry-pays-1-billion-in-tax

I’ve seen the signs too. I don’t know anyone who plays any more. 20 years ago I was told to take up the game as a way to meet / network for work, I tried it, but I hated it.

Now it just doesn’t come up nearly as often, if at all – people’s hobbies seem a lot more diverse, lots of cyclists, but more so than any group now seems to be the football players, there’s an artificial 5 a side place down the road from me, it’s busy 7 nights a week year round.

I pass the entrance to a course fairly often, the people who are coming and going mostly look 60+

I blame E-bikes…

You’ve just noticed? Been happening for over 10 years. Too time consuming for anyone but retirees and shift workers.

Mrs BigJohn has just taken it up and joined a local club – one of those ones that got taken in by the shysters who said “we’ll build you a brand new fantastic course for nothing” and has been playing host to a never-ending procession of landfill-laden lorries for the last few years.

Anyway, she’s been welcomed warmly by the existing members as “it’s nice to see some young faces joining”. She’s 63 FFS.

Club local to me (Southwood, Nr farnborough) closed in october, one of eight owned by Mack Golf, who ceased trading due to “unavoidable financial difficulties”.
Site was going to be turned into Green Space anyway next year.

Lol @ bigjohn!

It’s a dead sport. Lots of golfists but a very ageing player base. We’ve got some friends in the trade and the stories about over-entitlement are hilarious and scary.

Best one recently was a major refurb of a clubhouse – a kind of stately house affair. Everything planned, agreed, funded, project managed, etc etc. Work commenced, contractors in doing work. Captain turns up for his usual round and… explodes. Work stopped, emergency meeting called. Manager nearly sacked on the spot. Why? They’d suspended “his” parking space as part of the work.

Every story I hear makes me wonder why the sport carries on – sadly I can see MTBing heading down the same route in a bizarre kind of way.

I saw a report which said that increasingly golf club members are too decrepit to play anymore and unless there’s a sudden influx of younger members, most clubs are in decline. The fact that many clubs are now in prime development areas and land values increased considerably, it’s probably quite an attractive proposition to “sell up” and distribute the proceeds amongst the members. Given the type of “old duffers” who frequent them, I can’t see anything but a terminal decline.

I’d heard from a couple of younger guys I know who play that the tightening up of drink driving laws has stopped some people, no more casual pints back at the club house at the end of a round.

20 years ago I was told to take up the game as a way to meet / network for work

My mum used to bang on about that. I said if anyone wanted to “meet” they could come rock climbing with me.

Every story I hear makes me wonder why the sport carries on – sadly I can see MTBing heading down the same route in a bizarre kind of way.

Bit dramatic.

Golf knows it needs youths, but the truly elitist clubs just can’t let go. It’s 150 quid for a kids membership at royal Troon. Sounds brilliant, but in reality it’s no happening, as you need proposed by 3 members, there’s hardly any members and their all geriatric gammoners who would hate having kids on the course as much as they hate having women on there.

Mate of mine is trying to get in, hrs a partner in a large accounts firm, wants it for corporate baw licking, he needs to be proposed by 12 folk, nor allowed to ask or approach anyone, what a load of shite. 🤣

Mate of mine is trying to get in, hrs a partner in a large accounts firm, wants it for corporate baw licking, he needs to be proposed by 12 folk, nor allowed to ask or approach anyone, what a load of shite.

See, it’s EXACTLY this kind of shit that puts people off – I think in 2019 people have worked out how the whole exchange of money for services thing works and don’t want to beg to give away piles of cash to people in order to use their play ground for grown ups.

I wonder if the rise of facebook and other social media has harmed golf. People have a much easier way of showing off how much of a bellend they are now without needing to actually go visit a club to do so.

I wonder if the rise of facebook and other social media has harmed golf. People have a much easier way of showing off how much of a bellend they are now without needing to actually go visit a club to do so.

That’s a bit of a leap perhaps, but the Internet and it’s loudmouth off-spring S’media supposedly makes less inclined to actually see people in real life, although I also thought part of the draw of golf was to enjoy a perfectly manicured version of the world, throw a wall around in and keep those inside nicely spread out.

Perhaps allow selfie sticks to be carried in Golf Bags, I’m sure there’s a rule governing golf bags, Golf Clubs love a rule.

Saying that, Social Media and FB especially is in the decline.

Saying that, Social Media and FB especially is in the decline.

I hope so.

Lots of golf courses will be turned into housing estates.

I think a lot of courses are development plays anyway, not really there to make money from golf, just to wash their faces until they can get permission to develop.

I love a bit of stick ball but i can wack a stone with a bit of driftwood all day long down at the beach. When you hit the sweet spot and the stone zings out to sea, it is one of life’s little pleasures. Why would I pay for that?

Seriously though, golf has an image problem, and it’s hard to see that changing anytime soon. I know it’s not all clubs, but the whole ‘women not permitted’ at the Royal & Ancient or wherever it was sucks the proverbial big one. I mean, in the 21st century? And the wiff of that kind of misogynistic BS takes a long time to disperse. Probably a generation.

I seem to remember golf being promoted through the active schools in scotland, on the basis that it is learning a lifelong activity. So you may have giving up hucking gap jumps when you’re 50, but you’ll still be walking round a course thrashing a stick and ball in the undergrowth well into your retirement. And that is not a bad thing.

used to play a lot at the local municipal, was £1.25 a round (with concessions) at one stage in the late 80’s, used to play 3 rounds a day in June. It was moved to private management and prices went up and the course went to crap really quickly.

Tiger Woods and Seve were the only golf players who could be labelled anything near cool; but one is dead and the other struggles to hit the ball straight these days.
Peter Cook played golf but said he typically despised the average golfer he met on his rounds.
I used to play a lot – single figures at age 15 – and met some really good people, typically the coaches, but the whole vibe is very formal, more like a private members club. They did try to reach out to the yoof a bit when i was young but not for a sustained period of time.
Id also mention another reason – boys typically start playing with their dads. Now a lot of boys don’t see their dads so much due to work or divorce.

Royal Birkdale is just up the road. On the rota for the Open Championship.
You cannot apply to be a member. You cannot ask about becoming a member. You have to wait until an existing member approaches you and asks if you fancy joining. Joining means going on the provisional list for a minimum of 12 months where your every behavious is scrutinised. This includes parking your car tidily (the “right” car, of course), doffing your proverbial cap to your betters and elders without prompting, always allowing the captain to play through, buying the right amount of food and drink in the clubhouse and perhaps most important of all having a wife who will fit in doing the things that wives are expected to do. Women can’t be members but they can make sarnies, lay the table and wash up. They also cannot be seen, with or without their husbands, in the strictly men only male bar.

It’s a wonderful club, or so I’m told. I’m with Groucho Marx when it comes to golf clubs.

Very much so. Hence the rise of footgolf. Great laugh and very accessible.

It used to be a huge thing in my industry for corp hosp. Now more looking a sailing, rugby etc.

I also think the tightening of the bribery laws had an impact.

Royal Birkdale is just up the road. On the rota for the Open Championship.
You cannot apply to be a member.

Sounds….. shite. Why be a member there, when most “members” are indeed “members”

Private clubs I’m all in favour of, not when they exclude race or gender though.

It’s not just Golf thats suffering shrinking memberships through, Sailing is suffering in the same way too. Our Club has opened it’s membership out to all sorts of random odds n sods who’d never seen water before never mind a boat.. well maybe in a cartoon.🤪

So, we’ve opened memberships up and lowered fees and that just brings morons and chancers who put nothing into the club or take any kind of care over the facilities.

It’s a tricky balance, open memberships up and suffer the moaning or restrict memberships and suffer the moaning.

Golf though, well thats a particularly special case. It needs special people to belong, and as long as that type of person is restricted to travelling between Home and the Golf Club and not let out in society then I’m all for it. Jags and Beige and Gammon, thats all they are.

rene…

Saying that, Social Media and FB especially is in the decline.

I hope so.

Why

Ironically corporate “cycling” days are now quite common – a few friends act as ride leader for them to drag a bunch of mamils and mawils and their clients around a pre-arranged route with support and refreshments laid on.

My mum plays  golf a couple of times a week on a local course and looks like she could outlive me easily.  Not even slightly elitist at a local level and another form of social club.  If there are still local courses when I retire I am signing up but probably not before

Sailing’s an odd one, every club you go to has a thriving oppie fleet. A handful of toppers/fevas, and one person under 25 in a Laser.

They then all reappear in their 40’s with kids, who join the oppie fleet and the process repeats.

But other than that it’s really hard to retain members.

Sounds….. shite. Why be a member there, when most “members” are indeed “members”

Social standing. Pure and simple snobbery.
Kenny Dalglish (Sir Kenny), Alan Hansen and a host of footballers of renown and wealth who all live less than 0.5 miles from the course, are not members because they are not of the right social class.

our municipal course back home shut down recently, and was apparently losing £200k per year

there’s a bowls place too which remains open, and a separate athletics ground which is also unaffected.

no plans for what will happen to the site… which to me suggests development

Social standing. Pure and simple snobbery.
Kenny Dalglish (Sir Kenny), Alan Hansen and a host of footballers of renown and wealth who all live less than 0.5 miles from the course, are not members because they are not of the right social class.

Depends if they want to be a member surely?

Is Llandegla elitist because ex Liverpool players haven’t been spotted riding there?

rene…

Saying that, Social Media and FB especially is in the decline.

I hope so.

Why

Because I think they are being (mis)used far too much for bullshit reasons and are wrecking the lives of those addicted to them. I think overall the way they are currently used as echo chambers is harmful to society as a whole and the way they are used as a tool to go on witch hunts and jump on bandwagons are destroying lives. I hope their use declines back to the point where they are simply used for useful social reasons.

I haven’t hit a golf ball in 20 odd years and I’m thinking about getting back in to it. Half my family are in the golf world, 2 uncles are club pro’s, cousin 1 trying to get on to the European Tour, cousin 2 works for a golf clothing company and is off scratch, my brother is off scratch, a few mates who I used to play with are pros now, one at a leading Midlands club and two have teamed up together and have a YouTube channel with 500k subscribers, millions of views and have just been in Florida for new Taylor Made kit launch where they’ve been caddying for and doing coaching videos with Tiger Woods and Rory… Kinda wish I kept playing in my teens now!

Apart from footballers and cricketers it’s not something I hear much of in conversation these days, my ride to work goes past about 4 clubs, none of which seem busy at all, just the warnings about being taken out by golf balls.

As some have said lots of prime housing land that could be put to much better use for a much better return. Happy to leave that as parkland if it was but as a pay to access green space in the middle of busy cities happy to see them go.

When i moved to Surrey I could not believe the number of golf courses. However, I’d ride over Sunningdale just about every day and it always seemed largely deserted.

Hard to think why it’s losing popularity