- The sport drew 2.5 million new players last year after slump
- Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler help fill void left by Woods
When the career of Tiger Woods began to decline in 2009, he took the fortunes of the golf industry down with him.
The sport’s appeal faded among the millennial generation, and the industry found itself with too many greens and not enough players. It hit bottom in the past seven years: Hundreds of courses closed, millions of people left the sport, and bankruptcies rippled through the $70 billion golf world.
Now there are finally signs of an upswing. Apollo Global Management is acquiring country-club operator ClubCorp Holdings Inc. in the industry’s biggest takeover in years. New golf personalities are taking the place of Woods, and the sport is looking to attract younger players with Topgolf entertainment venues and other tactics.
The push helped bring 2.5 million new participants to the game last year, the most in more than a decade.
“Golf is in a good place and getting stronger,” David Abeles, chief executive officer of golf-equipment maker TaylorMade, said in an interview. “We’re optimistic that participation rates will continue to grow as we move forward.”
Apollo announced its bet on golf’s turnaround on Sunday, when it agreed to buy ClubCorp for $1.1 billion. The private equity firm is scooping up more than 200 golf and country clubs, including marquee courses such as California’s Mission Hills and the Woodlands in Texas.
The central thesis of that deal: Golf’s core players remain quite loyal to the sport — and their country-club fees will spin off cash for years to come. ClubCorp, based in Dallas, has more than 430,000 members.
More broadly, golf has seen a resurgence in so-called avid players, those who play at least 25 rounds on a regulation course per year. The number rose to 8.8 million last year, up 400,000 from 2015, according to the National Golf Foundation. Avid players are critical to the health of the sport because they account for 80 percent of industry spending.
During Woods’ prime, millions of new players flocked annually to golf — and the sport seemed poised to shed its country-club image and become more mainstream. But the industry now regards those days as a bubble.
The challenge now is rebuilding with more realistic aspirations.
New stars, such as Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler, are helping to attract a younger audience. In 2015, Spieth, who turns 24 later this month, became the second-youngest player, behind Woods, to win the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. The 28-year-old Fowler, meanwhile, reached No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking last year.
