再1The decline of golf, December 20th 2014 P105 1/3 (ゴルフの凋落1/3)
On recent Saturday Matt Owens, the owner of Trenton Street Golf Course in West Monroe, sat indoors facing the entrance to his course and greeted golfers. In this town of 13,000 inhabitants with a love of fried catfish and a reverence for “Duck Dynasty”, a television show about hunters whose stars live nearby, golf used to be a regular indulgence for many, and that mild autumn weekend was ideal golf weather. Yet by the end of the afternoon Mr Owens had taken in only around $200 in green fees, a tenth of what his course earned on Saturdays a few years ago. On weekends Mr Owens's 12-year-old course once swelled with golfers, but that ended when the economy sliced into the rough in 2008. He offers prices “affordable for rednecks”, but bargain are not enough to bring back customers. “I sometimes believe that I could give golf away, and they still wouldn't come,” he says. At the end of December he will close the course, and it will become a public park. What is happening West Monroe is not unusual. In America, the heartland of golf, the game is in decline. Golf traces its modern origins to 15th-century Scotland, where people played with wooden clubs and balls full of feathers. In 1457 King James II temporarily banned it, along with football, because it interfered with archery practice, but he was no match for its growing popularity. Mary, Queen of Scots was an enthusiast；her clubs were carried by students she called “cadets” (now known as “caddies”).The game of “gawf”, as it was first called, spread：first to England, and subsequently to its colonies. Golf went mainstream in America in the 1890s. The wealthy and upper middle classes formed private golf clubs where they could play. Then, as today, its appeal depended on time and money. Late-19th-century Americans, with plenty of both and no gadgets to occupy them at home, liked the fact that it took hours to play. Safer than polo and less tiring than football, golf allowed businessmen to get to know each other and do deals between shots. John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, early adopters, helped make the sports fashionable. It builds character as well as relationships. Golf teaches honesty, patience and camaraderie. Players see how their peers handle failure. The mental focus golf requires, with its excruciatingly difficult odds, keeps enthusiasts both attracted to and humbled by the game. PG Wodehouse once observed, “To find out a man's true character, play golf with him.” As America prospered, public courses opened alongside private clubs and exposed more people to the sport. Real estate helped drive its rise. Between 1992 and 2002, at least 60% of new golf courses were tied to property developments, according to Richard J. Moss, author of “The Kingdom of Golf in America”, a rich history of the sport. Golf courses increased the value of surrounding homes, and developers built long, complicated courses with the hope of attracting tournaments and attention. Today America is the largest golf market by a long shot. Around half the world's golf courses and players are thought to be in America, and the sport contributes around $70 billion to America's economy according to a 2011 study. Golf is not unlike a first home or a college degree：it carries the allure of progress, of arrival in the middle class. Only a few years ago some golf gurus forecast that the sport would grow even more, as baby boomers retired and flocked to the fair ways. They were wrong. Last year around 25m people played golf, 18% fewer than did so in 2006, although the population grew by 6%. Although still played by men and women, including business-people hoping to bond over more than lunch, golf does not hold the same appeal for the young and minorities, groups that will determine its future health. In recent years more people have abandoned than taken up the game. Emerald courses have not been the source of riches many anticipated. There are simply too many of them. Last year 160 of the country's 14,600 18-hole equivalent golf facilities shut up shop, the eighth straight year of net closures, according to the National Golf Foundation, an industry group. Steve Skinneq of Kemper Sports, a large golf-course operator, thinks it is going to take another ten years to level the imbalance between supply and demand. With only a handful of new courses scheduled for construction in America, architects are looking abroad to find work. “If golfcourse architecture were a publicly traded stock, it would be a penny stock right now,” says Brian Curley, an architect who spends much of his time designing courses in China. Professional golf remains healthy, as sponsors and advertisers still seek the wealthy, older men who form the core group of golf viewers and players, and consider them worth reaching, even in dwindling numbers. But sellers of golf clothing and equipment have been squeezed. Earlier this year Dick's Sporting Goods, a national retailer, laid off hundreds of employees in its golf division. Nike and Adidas are among the sports manufactures that have seen their earnings hit by a slowdown in recreational golf. Television ratings for golf on television have also declined.
