This post comes with a warning label. caution: Long Rant Ahead.....It started as a typical second tier item for inclusion in a daily post, but it quickly morphed into something way beyond that. So we'll party like it's 1999 with this righteous Fisking...
It's for good reason that Geoff's place of business is my first destination in the golf blogosphere each morning. Supporting that praise is this fine compilation of garments of the rendered ilk and teeth thoroughly gnashed. I may tend towards long and frequent excerpts, so true believers in the doctrine of fair use might be made uncomfortable.
We start with Lauren Silva Laughlin in the venerable Wall Street Journal, who seems the exitable sort:
Golf great Tiger Woods’s fifth Masters championship was met with hopes his stardom would revive the sport, as is often the case with epic athletic comebacks. For the nearly 600-year-old pastime, though, its attempts to lure the younger crowd will continue to suffer from challenges that even the greatest of athletes can’t help overcome.
Companies closely tied to the game, including Callaway Golf ELY 1.19% and Titleist ownerAcushnet Holdings , GOLF -0.44% have had to find new ways to get people interested in their products. Like other sports, the millennial and younger generations are causing big problems for both the viewership and popularity of sports.
Errr, mostly it was met with amazement at the improbable nature of the comeback and giddiness at the prospect of the drama possible in the near future.
As for these guys, it probably popped up on their phone in a news alert:
And do treat yourself to a second helping of the first sentence in the second graph, for which the venerable WSJ offers us exactly what as proof? Seems like they sell the same old way they always have, more or less, though I suppose we should give the lady a chance to make her case.
The trouble isn’t that fewer people are watching, but the attention span of the younger viewer is changing how they consume events, according to data from McKinsey. A 2017 study from the consulting group showed a decline in minutes watched, year over year. One unfixable problem is that young viewers rely on social media for moments they miss. Around 60% of millennial sports fans check scores and news on platforms like Twitter, versus only 40% for the preceding group, Generation X.
Golf’s problems are magnified. Not only does the sport lack the contact and action that lures viewers, but the average PGA Tour watcher in 2016 was 65 years old—2½ decades older than those watching Major League Soccer. That figure represented a five-year jump since 2006, according to Magna Global.
That opening bit seems a rather significant admission against interest, no? And the data in graph two is to the effect that the kids aren't watching in any case, so who cares about their attention spans. It's all a conspiracy controlled by the Ritalin Industrial Complex in any event...
She'd no doubt argue that if those precious snowflakes aren't force fed golf now they'll stick to shuffleboard in their retirement years, and there may well be something to that. But the unfortunate fact is that the nillennials are not exactly killing it at this game of life thing, living in their parents basement and all. Really, if they're out of the house, it's a home run...
But wait, there's more:
Another problem is that younger generations aren’t playing, so fewer people are interested. The number of people aged 18 to 44 playing golf fell by around one-third in the 10 years to 2015, according to consulting group Pellucid/Edgehill Golf Advisors. And courses are closing: almost 1,800 courses in the 10 years leading up to 2016, a big acceleration in the past several decades.
OK, we'll stipulate to the over-building of golf courses, though the golf industry wasn't the only party to not distinguish themselves in that era. I was critical early that the reporter didn't see the need to support her premises, but there's sins far worse than that, as per the graphic used as support:
How important is that guy who plays one round a year to the health of the game of golf? I don't know her data set, but I know that most of the horrendous numbers cited for participation rates use a similarly loose definition of golfer. Golf is a niche sport and, most importantly, always has been. There are golf stories that break through, some good (Tiger) and some bad (oddly enough, Tiger again).
But now comes the big reveal, the real, undeniable reason that golf is totally f*****d, against which resistance is futile:
Sports’ star power is changing, too. The latest sports hero is a 27-year-old, blue-haired electronic gamer named Ninja, a player of the popular videogame “Fortnite.” He recently received his own figurine line and was named in Time’s 2019 list of 100 most influential people.
I don't know, a 43-year old, no-haired father of two seemed to be a pretty big f******n deal a week or so ago.
And this rousing coda:
Looked at another way, the last millennial was born a year before Mr. Woods won his first Masters tournament in 1997, if Pew Research’s age benchmarks are used. When his extramarital scandal hit tabloids, they were rounding out junior high. Mr. Woods could be golf’s savior. More likely, though, in the eyes of a millennial, he’s just another aging putter.
Aging putter? Are there no editors left at the venerable WSJ? Was she deliberately going for the phallic reference, or does she not realize that reads to us like fingernails on a chalkboard. I mean, she coulda gotten away with swinger, a groaner for sure, but this is comically bad.
We're long on three-named writers today, as Sheena Butler-Young of the far-less-venerable Yahoo Sports now approaches the plate, sympathetic in the extreme over the existential angst she feels for our game:
This time, you can call it a comeback.
After a series of personal missteps and a hard-fought battle with back injuries, Tiger Woods made his triumphant returnto glory on Sunday — nabbing his fifth Masters Tournament title after an 11-year drought.The excitement over the historic victory seemed nearly palpable across mainstream and social media over the past 24 hours, but somewhere lurking behind it is a burning question: Does this mean golf is back, too?
For reasons that would require a team of Viennese psychiatrists to unpack, I'm reminded of the fact that it was said that Joe DiMaggio could never understand Mrs. Robinson. After all, he didn't think he had gone anywhere.... Apparently golf was wherever one goes that requires being back from, and I didn't get the memo.
Hope you're sitting down for this one, but here's a guy that thinks the issue is that millennials couldn't possibly take to a game such as ours:
“There are a lot of systemic headwinds for golf that are just not going away — in particular: Millennials are not picking up the game as quickly as Boomers are aging out of it,” explained Powell. “The game needs young people to be playing it to reverse its fortunes. I don’t think a 43-year-old guy winning a golf tournament is going to inspire young people to get out and pick up the game.’
He made it cool once already...
Similarly, Powell counted a laundry list of reasons why millennials and Gen Z won’t take the baton from their parents and grandparents and carry golf into the future.
“The values of the game of golf just aren’t [akin] to the way millennials do sport: The rules are complicated. It takes a long time to play. It’s not inclusive. It’s not diverse. Representation of minorities is low. Golf courses smell like a chemical factory to keep them green. I could go [on],” he said, noting millennials and Gen Z aren’t likely to ditch their core values as they age and adopt the sport later.
A chemical factory? Not even pretending here, are they? If your core values preclude contact with golfers, a bad crowd for sure, you might want to think about those values.
And this odd graph serves to close the piece, data that seems at odds with the whole point of the thing:
According to data provided by The NPD Group/Retail Tracking Service, golf shoe sales dipped about 2 percent year over year to $233.6 million in 2016 but jumped 8 percent to $251.9 million in 2017. Overall, according to the U.S. Golf Economy Report, the golf industry drove about $84.1 billion in economic activity across the United States in 2016, a 22 percent gain from 2011.
Not too shabby, eh? For a dying sport and all....
The trite narrative backed by shoddy journalism is pretty amusing, especially at a place like The Journal. But I'll leave you with just this serious point.... Why should these folks see golf as the timeless sport it is, going back to Mary Queen of Scots and earlier, when our governing bodies don't? That's the only logical conclusion from the rewrite of the rule book and the dumbing down of the centuries-old terminology of our game....The same folks that are bemoaning the loss of once-a-year golfers think the problem is the complexity of language such as all-square and hazard.....That alone makes me fear for our future.
Back tomorrow with the usual potpourri of items...
No comments:
Post a Comment