TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050889/05088900.017

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8.9 KB | 171 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 66

On the Seventh Day He Played


From green to shining green, Americans in the fortysomething
set are making golf the game for the 1990s

By Christine Gorman


    Twenty years ago, a morning on the golf course was a
political statement. To the tune-in, drop-out generation, golf
meant Bob Hope and his U.S.O. tours, neatly pressed clothes,
graying hair trimmed high around the ears and cut well above the
collar. Country-club golf was a symbol of everything the young
held in contempt, a bastion, perhaps the last, of the
back-slapping big business deal. Golf was something for Dad, but
not for the new generation.

    What a difference two decades make. Golf seems destined to
be the game for the 1990s. Business, on and off the links, is
booming. Some 23 million golfers last year teed off at 13,626
courses in the U.S. -- up 30% from 1985. They spent $15.6
billion on equipment, clothes, fees, lessons and resort travel,
with the average duffer shelling out $675 each year. Industry
analysts predict that annual sales will double by the end of the
next decade. The sport supports no fewer than four major
magazines: Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, Golf World and the
phenomenally successful Golf Illustrated, whose circulation has
increased from 35,000 to 400,000 since 1985. "Golf," says Jay
Mottola, executive director of the Metropolitan Golf
Association, "is the In thing now."

    Retailers are scrambling to pluck some gold from the green.
Sales from K mart's spruced-up golf line this year will top
those for either tennis or exercise equipment. Wilson Sporting
Goods' golf-clothing sales have more than doubled since 1985,
to $11 million annually. In California off-course golf shops
like the Roger Dunn franchise seem to be sprouting on every
corner. Says Dennis Davenport, executive director of the Chicago
District Golf Association: "Anyone in the industry who is not
doing well is doing something wrong."

    Such corporate giants as AT&T, Shearson Lehman Hutton and
Toyota are catching a ride on the golf cart. Prizes offered by
the corporate sponsors of Professional Golfers' Association
tournaments are expected to top $63 million this year, up from
$31 million four years ago. Says Gee Winands, advertising
manager for Sunkist Growers, which annually earmarks about
$200,000 for the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour: "We
get brand-name exposure by sponsoring the `Quiet Please'
paddles. Every time they hold them up, well, you can't get that
kind of exposure from regular advertising." Corporations love
golf, says Susan Binford, a Los Angeles media consultant and
former pro golf instructor. "It's such a clean sport. When was
the last time you heard about a guy busted for drugs who was a
P.G.A. member?" she asks.

    No industry has worked harder at wooing golfers than the
hotel and resort business. As astronaut Alan Shepard showed in
1971 with his six-iron shot on the moon, golfers will go to
practically any extreme to try out a new course. According to
the National Golf Foundation, players spent nearly $8 billion
of their golf outlays last year on travel. Marriott Hotels and
Resorts, based in Bethesda, Md., currently operates 18 golf
getaways in the U.S., plans to open another in Hauppauge, N.Y.,
this fall and has three more on the drawing board. "If we don't
have golf, we'd better have an ocean," says Marriott vice
president Roger Maxwell. "If we don't have an ocean, we'd better
have golf." Maxwell estimates that 95% of the hotel chain's
group business comes from golfers.

    Golf today is not the same game that First Putter Dwight
Eisenhower played in the 1950s. Back then, says David Ferm,
publisher of Golf Digest, "it was perceived as a game for fat,
rich, old white guys." Today 40% of the 2 million newcomers are
women, and club pros see an increasing number of African
Americans and Hispanics concentrating on 10-ft. putts. Golf is
also appealing to a younger crowd. And it shows. Myrtle Beach,
S.C., for example, has evolved from a secluded, two-course
resort town into a family golfing Mecca with 49 public and ten
private links. "It's the perfect sport for the `I'm-in-control
generation,' " says Binford. Nor is it so hard on the knees as
tennis or jogging -- something that baby boomers have come to
appreciate now that they are turning fortysomething.

    Like generations before them, today's golfers have
discovered that the game can be good for their careers. "A lot
of my business associates play," explains Kevin Bryant, 26, an
insurance salesman in Greenville, S.C., who took up the sport
a year and a half ago. And the handicap system evens out age and
ability differences between players. Says Bryant: "It's the only
sport where a 45-year-old can compete equally with a
25-year-old."

    Although some believe only the truly gauche try to cut
deals on the green, negotiating them over drinks after a game
is acceptable. Besides, the fairway offers business golfers the
chance to probe an associate's psychological strengths and
weaknesses. Does the person blame himself or his caddy for a bad
slice into the woods? Is she a club thrower or a pouter? Says
Hollis Stacy, 35, who has won more than $1.3 million in Ladies
Professional Golf Association tours: "If you find people who
cheat at golf, chances are they cheat at life." Sports agent
Mark McCormack in his best seller What They Don't Teach You at
Harvard Business School warns executives about character traits
seen on the green. How a business associate handles the
"gimmes," short putts that are often conceded by an opponent,
can help you understand someone's personality. McCormack says
that business people who assume a putt is a gimme -- even when
it is 6 ft. away from the hole -- will never ask for a favor.
They expect it.

    A technical revolution in equipment has also delivered
high-quality, moderately priced clubs and balls that give
novices a chance to enjoy the game more quickly. The clubs used
for driving and for long fairway shots are still known as
"woods," but they strike truer now because they are made of
metal. And the balls have been redesigned as well. Early last
year Wilson Sporting Goods hired Gail Jonkouski, a former NASA
engineer, to design a golf ball that would fly farther and
straighter than balls then in use. With the help of a computer,
Jonkouski rearranged the dimples on the balls to reduce air
friction.

    Karsten Solheim revolutionized the sport in 1984 with his
controversial Ping Eye2 irons. Until then the grooves found on
most clubs were V shaped, but Solheim, a mechanical engineer,
discovered that squaring out the grooves gave players greater
control. The square or U-shaped grooves work so well, in fact,
that the P.G.A. tour has announced that it will ban their use
in its tournaments next year. But amateurs continue to shell out
$600 to $1,500 for a set of Ping clubs. Sales at privately held
Karsten Manufacturing have grown 10% to 20% a month since 1985.

    Golfing's increasing popularity, however, may drive it into
the rough. "I see a trend toward people without sufficient
education about the game of golf who have little respect for it
or for other people on the course," says Dean Lind, the golf pro
who operates the municipal course in Wilmette, Ill. Result: the
average time required to play an 18-hole course often shoots up
from less than four hours to five hours or more. Other players
do not seem to understand that golfing is meant to get them away
from the office. "There is nothing as disturbing as hearing a
cellular telephone ring right in the middle of your swing," says
Steve Lesnik, president of the company that manages the Kemper
Lakes club outside Chicago.

    More troubling, there are not enough golf courses to meet
demand. The National Golf Foundation estimates that 4,000 new
courses would have to be built in the next decade to meet the
crush. But high real estate and development costs kept the
number of new courses to 211 last year. On average, once the
land is bought, it takes $4 million to $5 million more to build
a course. Shortages are most severe in Southern California and
in the Northeast. Most golf-course development over the past few
years has been tied to residential communities, where
well-maintained links can double the value of nearby homes.

    Club fees have jumped as well -- although nowhere near the
staggering levels paid in golf-crazy Japan (the most expensive:
$2.5 million for the Koganei Country Club near Tokyo). In
Highland Park, Ill., for example, initiation fees at the Exmoor
Country Club have risen from $8,000 to $25,000 in the past five
years. Memberships at some private clubs in the Los Angeles area
cost more than $50,000, and $2,500 annually thereafter. But so
far, golf aficionados are willing to pay those prices. Fore!


-- Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York