Post by Richie3Jack on Oct 13, 2014 20:17:49 GMT -5
Money is obviously a big factor, but when discretionary income was very high in the mid to late 90's, there was still a decline in people actually playing golf. The golf industry thought that more people wanting to watch Tiger would mean more people playing golf, but compared to the mid to late 80's the amount of golf declined.
My home club had a member-guest that was on a Friday-Saturday-Sunday. It used to have a legitimate 5-year waiting list. I signed up on the list when I was 13 years old and didn't get to play in it until I was 18. It used to have a $100k in cash going into the calcutta (they used to hire off duty police officers to stand by while we counted the cash and put it into a safe). And that was in the late 80's (around 1988).
About 10 years later when the economy was doing spectacular, they had a hard time filling the event.
The same happened with our city championship. It was a match play event. The qualifier was on a Saturday and then they split you into 2 flights of 32 players depending on how you played. From there, you had to set up a time during the week to play against your opponent until about 3 weeks later when they had the semis and finals on the weekend.
The city championship would draw about 90 players a year and if you weren't within the low 64 scores, tough luck. You're done.
In order to be eligible for the city championship you had to do 1 of the following:
1. Be employed within city limits
2. Be a member at one of the courses within city limits
3. Live within city limits
By the late 90's the numbers started to dwindle to the point where they would give 1st round byes to the top players in each flight. Now they decided to change the rules that you are eligible if you are *within* COUNTY limits. The counties in NY are quite large so it takes up a lot more possible eligible participants. And now they can only get about 50 players.
To me, I still see a lot of people spending a lot of money on leisure activities. Football games are still selling out and they just up the ante with private seat licenses. So, you can easily spend $10k+ a year on tickets (not to mention parking and tailgating) for a family of 4.
I don't think the restaurant business is dying down. Neither is all of the high tech gadgets like iPhones, tablets, etc.
Golf takes time to play and it's hard to convince the wife to let you spend 5 hours away from them. You could when it was 1983 and you had 4 weeks of paid vacation and 15 days of holidays. There's a reason why you don't see the family road trips anymore...they waste too much of the parents' limited free time unless they decide to fly and then you've just about doubled the cost.
So with that limited time...people start to be more picky about how they choose to spend that time. A husband/father that is a giant college football fan and loves golf now has to choose between one of them. And you can spend your money on watching college football to be the same as you would for golf for an entire season. The difference is that college football lasts about 4 hours a week whereas golf lasts 4 hours a round.
3JACK
My home club had a member-guest that was on a Friday-Saturday-Sunday. It used to have a legitimate 5-year waiting list. I signed up on the list when I was 13 years old and didn't get to play in it until I was 18. It used to have a $100k in cash going into the calcutta (they used to hire off duty police officers to stand by while we counted the cash and put it into a safe). And that was in the late 80's (around 1988).
About 10 years later when the economy was doing spectacular, they had a hard time filling the event.
The same happened with our city championship. It was a match play event. The qualifier was on a Saturday and then they split you into 2 flights of 32 players depending on how you played. From there, you had to set up a time during the week to play against your opponent until about 3 weeks later when they had the semis and finals on the weekend.
The city championship would draw about 90 players a year and if you weren't within the low 64 scores, tough luck. You're done.
In order to be eligible for the city championship you had to do 1 of the following:
1. Be employed within city limits
2. Be a member at one of the courses within city limits
3. Live within city limits
By the late 90's the numbers started to dwindle to the point where they would give 1st round byes to the top players in each flight. Now they decided to change the rules that you are eligible if you are *within* COUNTY limits. The counties in NY are quite large so it takes up a lot more possible eligible participants. And now they can only get about 50 players.
To me, I still see a lot of people spending a lot of money on leisure activities. Football games are still selling out and they just up the ante with private seat licenses. So, you can easily spend $10k+ a year on tickets (not to mention parking and tailgating) for a family of 4.
I don't think the restaurant business is dying down. Neither is all of the high tech gadgets like iPhones, tablets, etc.
Golf takes time to play and it's hard to convince the wife to let you spend 5 hours away from them. You could when it was 1983 and you had 4 weeks of paid vacation and 15 days of holidays. There's a reason why you don't see the family road trips anymore...they waste too much of the parents' limited free time unless they decide to fly and then you've just about doubled the cost.
So with that limited time...people start to be more picky about how they choose to spend that time. A husband/father that is a giant college football fan and loves golf now has to choose between one of them. And you can spend your money on watching college football to be the same as you would for golf for an entire season. The difference is that college football lasts about 4 hours a week whereas golf lasts 4 hours a round.
3JACK