The number of golfers in the United Kingdom could double if golf course owners did a few simple things, like maybe act friendlier, relax their dress codes, make their venues easier to play, try harder to attract women and children and let people play for free.
Okay, those free rounds wouldn’t last forever. But still, it’s no mean feat to persuade hard-up course owners to give their product away for nothing.
Nonetheless, free golf is among the recommendations in a new survey, “Growing Golf in the U.K,” that measured the opinions of 3,500 British residents, fewer than 1,500 of them golfers. The survey has determined that an estimated 8.5 million people in the U.K. – nearly half of them between the ages of 15 and 39 – are interested in playing golf, but for various reasons, intimidation being chief among them, can’t quite manage to find their way to a golf course.
“What we’ve found,” said Eric Brown of Syngenta, which commissioned the survey, “is that there is very significant latent demand for golf that could be realized if clubs and courses were able to promote themselves in a more friendly, flexible, and family-orientated way.”
One noteworthy factoid from the survey: 55 percent of the respondents said that a lack of time didn’t prevent them from playing golf.
