On The Seventh Day He Played

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!

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: National Golf Association}]CAPTION: FORE! U.S. PLAYERS

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York