The State Of Golf In 2018
June 13, 2018 at 3:18 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
My friend and I were discussing a measure that had been considered by members of the Indiana General Assembly that would have put the Hoosier State on Central Time, as opposed to Eastern Time as we are now.
He believes that we are best suited to live in Central Time all year long, which means we would be on the same time as Chicago all year long. I have no real political aspirations (if I was into inflicting pain like that on myself, I would get into coaching), but if I did, I would run for governor. One of my major platforms would be returning us to the place where we didn’t change our clocks at all. We would be on the same time as Chicago in the summer and Cincinnati and New York in the winter.
The sun would go down at 9:15 p.m. in June and July, which would make parents from Angola to Jasper thrilled to death. The rest would take care of itself, and no more trying to remember whether we are moving clocks forward or backward twice a year.
Sunset happening earlier would also make prime fishing hours come earlier – which is a big deal when you get up for work at 4:20 the next morning.
My friend says we should be on “Chicago Time” all year round because Chicago is the closest major city to us. He then questioned why then-Governor Mitch Daniels ever championed the cause of switching us to an Eastern Time Zone state in the first place.
I reminded him that it was to give us an extra hour after we got off work each night to do outdoors activities like fishing or boating or golf, which would give a financial boost to those industries.
That’s when the conversation took an unforeseen hard turn to the left.
Another person involved in the conversation chimed in with this bombshell: “Who cares, no one plays golf anymore anyway.”
What? What was this person saying?
He doubled down on that by saying “golf is a dying sport because it takes too long to play, and no one has that kinda time anymore.”
Microphone dropped.
My immediate reaction was that the statements were inaccurate and unfair, but it did spur me to want to find out what the truth was.
The National Golf Foundation says that while the number of golfers nationwide was down from 2015 to 2016, it was down within the statistical margin of error. They also claim that the number of people who tried golf for the first time (in all age groups) actually increased during that same time frame.
Next, I went to respected golf website www.golf.com to see what they had to say. In 2015, which was the most recent information I found, it was estimated that 32 percent of all Hoosiers tee it up each golf season. The website gave Indiana a rating of 21 out of the 50 states based on participation, quality of golf courses and the golfing legacy here.
People are still playing, but does it take too long to play golf?
There are a lot of variables to that, so it’s a hard question to answer. Each course it different, and each hole on each course is a little different.
You have to ask: how narrow are the fairways? Narrow fairways mean more balls hit into the rough, which makes them harder to find, which means more looking for golf balls.
Are there a lot of trees? A ball that hits a tree is hard to follow and even harder to find where it ends up.
How long is the course? Longer courses mean longer irons and hybrid/woods used more often, and those are harder to control, which means more ball hunting.
And things like weather, popularity of the course, and how much it costs to play all factor into that.
But I will say that in recent years, some of the common-sense things golfers used to do have become less common practices. I am talking about being aware of who is behind you and letting smaller groups or single players play through your group. Or playing behind a group of five or six people staggering around the course with no concern for who is around them. There is nothing more frustrating than sitting in your cart for 10 minutes while some guy wiggles around to hit his next shot, or watching someone line up a putt like it’s the 17th hole on Sunday at Augusta National.
And lost balls … it’s lost dude. You aren’t going to find it. It hit a tree, and it could have gone anywhere. Give up, drop another one in the general area where you thought it was going to be and move on.
You can grump around about the golf course not doing something about it if you want, but what would you like them to do? They don’t have the time to drive around and police all the problems that occur daily or weekly on the course. Golf is a game of integrity, so we ought to be able to deal with it ourselves, right?
We are fortunate to have a lot of quality golf courses within Kosciusko County and in the communities just outside of our county in varying degrees of difficulty and price range to suit most golfers.
Golf is a game that promotes physical motion and being outdoors, and we can’t have enough of that. It’s one of the few physical activities that people in their 80s and 90s can still do and enjoy doing. It’s a good sport and communities should promote it in the same way they do other outdoor activities.
So, get a tee time, and hit ‘em straight … but make sure you know if that tee time is Eastern Time or Central Time. You don’t want to be late.
My friend and I were discussing a measure that had been considered by members of the Indiana General Assembly that would have put the Hoosier State on Central Time, as opposed to Eastern Time as we are now.
He believes that we are best suited to live in Central Time all year long, which means we would be on the same time as Chicago all year long. I have no real political aspirations (if I was into inflicting pain like that on myself, I would get into coaching), but if I did, I would run for governor. One of my major platforms would be returning us to the place where we didn’t change our clocks at all. We would be on the same time as Chicago in the summer and Cincinnati and New York in the winter.
The sun would go down at 9:15 p.m. in June and July, which would make parents from Angola to Jasper thrilled to death. The rest would take care of itself, and no more trying to remember whether we are moving clocks forward or backward twice a year.
Sunset happening earlier would also make prime fishing hours come earlier – which is a big deal when you get up for work at 4:20 the next morning.
My friend says we should be on “Chicago Time” all year round because Chicago is the closest major city to us. He then questioned why then-Governor Mitch Daniels ever championed the cause of switching us to an Eastern Time Zone state in the first place.
I reminded him that it was to give us an extra hour after we got off work each night to do outdoors activities like fishing or boating or golf, which would give a financial boost to those industries.
That’s when the conversation took an unforeseen hard turn to the left.
Another person involved in the conversation chimed in with this bombshell: “Who cares, no one plays golf anymore anyway.”
What? What was this person saying?
He doubled down on that by saying “golf is a dying sport because it takes too long to play, and no one has that kinda time anymore.”
Microphone dropped.
My immediate reaction was that the statements were inaccurate and unfair, but it did spur me to want to find out what the truth was.
The National Golf Foundation says that while the number of golfers nationwide was down from 2015 to 2016, it was down within the statistical margin of error. They also claim that the number of people who tried golf for the first time (in all age groups) actually increased during that same time frame.
Next, I went to respected golf website www.golf.com to see what they had to say. In 2015, which was the most recent information I found, it was estimated that 32 percent of all Hoosiers tee it up each golf season. The website gave Indiana a rating of 21 out of the 50 states based on participation, quality of golf courses and the golfing legacy here.
People are still playing, but does it take too long to play golf?
There are a lot of variables to that, so it’s a hard question to answer. Each course it different, and each hole on each course is a little different.
You have to ask: how narrow are the fairways? Narrow fairways mean more balls hit into the rough, which makes them harder to find, which means more looking for golf balls.
Are there a lot of trees? A ball that hits a tree is hard to follow and even harder to find where it ends up.
How long is the course? Longer courses mean longer irons and hybrid/woods used more often, and those are harder to control, which means more ball hunting.
And things like weather, popularity of the course, and how much it costs to play all factor into that.
But I will say that in recent years, some of the common-sense things golfers used to do have become less common practices. I am talking about being aware of who is behind you and letting smaller groups or single players play through your group. Or playing behind a group of five or six people staggering around the course with no concern for who is around them. There is nothing more frustrating than sitting in your cart for 10 minutes while some guy wiggles around to hit his next shot, or watching someone line up a putt like it’s the 17th hole on Sunday at Augusta National.
And lost balls … it’s lost dude. You aren’t going to find it. It hit a tree, and it could have gone anywhere. Give up, drop another one in the general area where you thought it was going to be and move on.
You can grump around about the golf course not doing something about it if you want, but what would you like them to do? They don’t have the time to drive around and police all the problems that occur daily or weekly on the course. Golf is a game of integrity, so we ought to be able to deal with it ourselves, right?
We are fortunate to have a lot of quality golf courses within Kosciusko County and in the communities just outside of our county in varying degrees of difficulty and price range to suit most golfers.
Golf is a game that promotes physical motion and being outdoors, and we can’t have enough of that. It’s one of the few physical activities that people in their 80s and 90s can still do and enjoy doing. It’s a good sport and communities should promote it in the same way they do other outdoor activities.
So, get a tee time, and hit ‘em straight … but make sure you know if that tee time is Eastern Time or Central Time. You don’t want to be late.
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