The best week in all of golf
The Masters is golf’s biggest tournament of the year and first major championship of the season. Held during the first full-week in April at Augusta National in Augusta, Georgia this year’s invitation-only contest will be the 88th playing in the tournament’s storied history where the best field in golf will compete for $18,000,000 - with the winner walking away with $3.24 million and a coveted Green Jacket.
As an avid golfer myself and unabashed fan, I will join millions of fans in watching the action live with minimal commercial interruption on CBS’s weekend coverage, following all the shots from my phone, and tuning into featured groups via the Masters app. For a tournament with so many closely held traditions (fans are referred to as “patrons,” whose phones are not allowed on the property) and its reverence for history, it has created perhaps the most modern fan experience in live professional sports.
So while the course conditions are tuned to perfection, the azaleas are in full bloom and the players and patrons donning their pastels in full technicolor, is Golf’s Garden of Eden but a mirage amidst an otherwise struggling game with waning interest?
Golf’s new trajectory
Absent a true global megastar like Tiger Woods, golf’s popularity has not surged due to the mind-melting ability or commercial appeal of any one player. Instead, it’s been the convergence of two forces to both introduce the game to millions of new players as well as re-engage lapsed ones. A global pandemic and the rise of off-course golf.
As one of the few socially-distant activities available to restless activity-seekers during the pandemic, golf joined the sourdough bread baking craze as one of the hobbies to surge in popularity, where starter sets and sourdough starter were equally hard to come by.
Yet while many of the pandemic-inspired hobbies have faded, golf’s popularity has continued to surge, with nearly 1 in 7 Americans reporting playing in 2022, a 20% increase since 2019.
In 2023, the number of golf participants (on-course and off-course) totaled 45 million, with 18.5 million coming from off-course. This continued trend of off-course golf growth comes as brands like TopGolf and Drive Shack continue their national expansion of interactive driving ranges and entertainment venues. In addition, commercial and at-home golf simulator participation has experienced 73% growth since 2019 as technology costs have fallen.
So what’s behind this moment?
Thanks to the surge in the game’s accessibility during the pandemic, and fun, off-course alternatives, new entrants to the game are younger, more female, more racially diverse and more middle class. For a game that has been long criticized as a haven for older, rich white men, these latest statistics are more than encouraging in supporting the future growth of golf.
Golf’s new voices
Helping to increase visibility of previously underrepresented golfers and bring golf into a wider culture consciousness are fashion brands like East Side Golf and Malbon Golf, and celebrity influencers like DJ Khaled and Drake. With partnerships with the Jordan Brand and Nike, East Side Golf, Malbon Golf and Drake’s NOCTA brand are bridging the gap between casual streetwear and a more conservative golf fashion, and giving sartorial cover to those who don’t identify with golf’s traditional dress codes. As a novice golfer, DJ Khaled has turned his own brand of perpetual optimism towards the game, using his “Let’s Go Golfing” rallying cry and invitation to his near 40 million Instagram followers.
What’s next
One of the many beauties of the game of golf is that we, as casual fans and golf nuts alike, can play the same courses (for the most part) with the same equipment from the same tees as those that compete on the highest level. It connects us to the professional game in ways that other sports simply cannot. Sure, you can hit an NBA range 3 point shot from your driveway, but you’ll never get the feeling of draining a three while coming off of a screen from Draymond Green in front of a capacity crowd at Chase Center. Yet we as amateur golfers can attempt the same dazzling approach shot at the par 3 7th at Pebble Beach, much like dozens of major champions before us have. So while spiritually intertwined with the professional game, the success of the amateur game and the golf industry at large, is becoming increasingly separate.
The success of Netflix’s “Full Swing” (currently filming its unconfirmed 3rd season) has brought new viewership and interest to the professional game, despite its most recent fracture between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf League. Yet as ungodly sums of money have flooded the pro circuits in the past few years, it hasn’t equated to increased fan interest outside of major championships, like the Masters. Instead the professional golf product has greatly suffered from lack of cohesion and fewer global stars playing together on a regular, must-see -TV basis.
So while most of televised golf has become ignorable, it isn’t a harbinger of the future of the game. Instead, golf’s exciting future rests with those who may have golfed before, hit golf balls over beers and finger food with friends at a Top Golf or their local golf simulator facility, but do not otherwise consider themselves a capital G golfer or avid golf fan. This is both fragile and fertile territory for golf brands as what has traditionally appealed to golfers may not be relevant to those who golf but haven’t historically identified with its on-course and stuffy country club culture. And while golf prides itself in maintaining and self-enforcing its own rules, brands can’t be afraid of breaking their own to reach and engage those that hold the key to the game’s future.