World number one Woods, who had a big earnings drop in 2009 after a spat with his Swedish wife Elin Nordegren that ended in divorce, was back on top of the Forbes rich list of the globe’s highest-paid athletes in June 2013 with the American enjoying an estimated annual income of $78.1 million, the magazine said.īut the under-35 age group has been tempted away by an increasing amount of alternative leisure activities, the bulk of which take less than an hour to complete whereas an 18-hole round of golf can often last more than five hours. Some people are still attracted to golf by the prospect of great riches. compared to 25 million golfers and soccer is growing at an eight percent rate per year so I view this as a great way to get a segment of the population on to my golf course,” Bishop said. “There are 50 million soccer players in the U.S. Par-three holes are between 60 and 90 yards long, par-fours range up to 150 yards and par-fives up to 250 yards. This novel concept involves a soccer ball being kicked from a set of tee markers to a green featuring a 21-inch hole. And if they do then ultimately the goal is to try to turn those people into customary golfers.”īishop, whose PGA of America organisation represents more than 27,000 professionals, has been especially excited by the possibilities raised by ‘foot golf’. “But there are a whole host of other people out there that might enjoy playing more relaxed or looser forms of the sport just to see if they enjoy it. “One is the traditional game that we watch every weekend on television across the world and it’s the same game that many amateur golfers play day-in and day-out. “For the first time ever it’s not wrong for us to look at our sport and say that there are two types of golf that can be played,” said Bishop who owns a large golf complex in Indiana. “There is a mindset in golf that needs to change and it’s going to take probably several years for that to happen,” PGA of America president Ted Bishop told Reuters. have been implemented around the world in a bid to attract people to golf who may never have considered the sport, or are simply put off by the amount of time required for 18 holes. These and other measures pioneered in the U.S. Golf, though, is responding to its own warning cries of ‘Fore’ by thinking outside of the time-honoured traditions of the game that was invented in Scotland in the late 15th century as it faces arguably its biggest struggle for survival in the 21st.Īmong the innovations: soccer balls instead of a dimpled Titleist or Callaway golf holes with a 15-inch diameter that look more like a bucket than the traditional cup the ability for players to clock in and out of rounds and thereby pay for as long as they are on the course. In almost every part of the globe the number of players participating in the game has slumped alarmingly in the last 10 years, mainly due to the amount of time required to play a round in the high-speed digital age where attention spans appear limited.Īccording to the National Golf Foundation (NGF), the sport has lost five million players in the United States in the past decade and 20 percent of the 25 million golfers now active in the country are likely to quit in the next few years. PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida, May 10 (Reuters) - Tiger Woods is the world’s top-earning athlete and tournaments still lure blue-chip sponsors and huge TV rights but golf is losing millions of players, prompting desperate ideas to stem the tide.
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