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Part physical, part mental and part stuck-up, the wonder of it all is how it ever became so popular. Still, you can't argue with the facts. Golf might be a quasi-sport, but it's easily our most popular variety and an awful lot of New Zealanders have been obsessing over bogies, wedges and plus fours since we got rid of all those tiresome trees that used to clog up the landscape.
It's even boasted that our enthusiasm for spoiling a good walk is such that we now have more golf courses per person than anywhere else in the world. Admittedly much of that growth was driven during the days when dads could go AWOL pretty much whenever they liked without a worry in the world, but it's fast becoming as much a millstone as a boast because, according to New Zealand Golf, almost all of the country's 392 (and climbing) courses are battling. And you golfers have no one but yourselves to blame.
To illustrate the problem, take Steve Orsbourn's response to what it was like to have a motorway extension bludgeon through his golfclub two years ago: "It was like we'd been shot up the arse with a rainbow." You see, golf is largely a numbers game and it's the numbers paid to Orsbourn's club as compensation that made the tarmac intrusion an experience he would like to see repeated.
There may be half a million golfers like Orsbourn hacking up our countryside, making it easily our highest participation sport, but only one in four at best is formally attached to a club. Even then, with an average age in the early 60s, they're not exactly the faces of the future.
As for the rest, you drag out your clubs once in a blue moon to hook up with some mates and happily wander some random course before a carefree beer and burger. All good fun, but that lack of commitment is giving clubs worry-lines - the annual subscriptions they used to rely on to cover the million or so dollars needed each year for general maintenance, redevelopment projects and staff wages now have to be topped up by the green fees paid by fellow (hardly reliable) part-time sloggers.
Even the mostly well-off members of the Remuera Golf Club were pushed to revolt. Long-time member Michelle Boag says an ambitious redevelopment plan threatened to push the $2000 annual fees even higher. "We'd had a couple of tremendous years, but then the general manager and board began pushing a hugely ambitious long-term plan and wanted the current members to pay for it. But most of the membership are about 60, on fixed incomes, and, quite frankly, may not be around to enjoy them, so we revolted, called a special meeting and refused to support them.
This is a widespread problem and it's not going to be solved until we get young people playing the game again, especially the ones who can afford the fees and can pay for the developments that'll carry our clubs into the future." Boag is probably right, but it seems we have become a casual society where our spare time is divvied up among a new menu of entertainment - computer games become even more seductive after discovering a round of golf can swallow up an entire day, not to mention a wodge of cash for the gear, plus knowing it'll take many such days and dollars before you master its rudimentary arts.
So, we have clubs in Australia turning to pokie machines to drag in the punters, more clubs are closing than opening for the first time in the United States and, in England, clubs that once boasted 10-year waiting lists are now conducting membership drives.
Golfers used to be painted as the cash-rich, now they're the time-rich, and while lawn bowls received a rainbow injection through its revival as cheap retro fun for stag do's and the like, golf, with it's self-aggrandising rules on dress and etiquette, would probably rather be left weeping in a corner than allow itself to be seen as quirky kiwiana.
Which is why New Zealand Golf is out and about pushing its new Golf Nation resuscitation plan. Chief executive Bill MacGowan will spend the next six months touring the country in the hope of convincing notoriously independent clubs to link arms and prop each other up. He says club memberships have been dropping by 2 per cent a year since 2004, a statistic that must be reversed before it threatens their Sparc funding.
Among his remedies is a move to stratify clubs across five bands - members of, say, a band two club could then play at any other band two club in the country for free, but would have to pay a sliding fee to play at clubs in higher bands. Whether this will entice new players to commit themselves to a club is a moot point.
Annual fees can range from Waiheke's $500 to Remuera's $2000, but with the average for Auckland clubs at $1500 the cost will still put off green-fee players who struggle to fit in more than one or two rounds a month at about $50 a pop. Still, the scheme should benefit cheaper clubs and anyone regularly travelling the country.
MacGowan is hopeful his plan will boost memberships by 2.5 per cent overall which, while welcome, still wouldn't make up for the fall-off over the past four years.
Then there are cost-cutting measures such as merging administrative functions with neighbouring sports clubs - golf, bowls and so on - and if that doesn't sit well there's also the issue of lessening the stuffy dress codes. Many clubs are already beginning to relax the collared, smart-casual dress standard in their clubrooms, but jeans, jandals, T-shirts with logos and cellphones are still banned on most courses.
So, how are the clubs feeling? Well, Akarana and Maungakiekie Golf Clubs in suburban Mt Roskill are separated only by a couple of hefty drives and they each reflect the shifting fortunes of Auckland's urban clubs. Akarana was the beneficiary of the rainbow shot lauded by Orsbourn earlier, but it still faces the same issues troubling its close neighbour.
Compensation for the SH20 motorway extension and a wave of Asian immigration about 10 years ago breathed new life and fairways into Akarana, says club general manager Steve Hackett, but lifestyle changes and financial necessities mean they must continue to adapt or fade away. He says membership levels are steady - they have about 840 playing members with an average age in the mid-50s and make about $218,000 a year from green-fee players - but the immediate to medium-term future is troubling.
Planned clubhouse renovations have been delayed until the future becomes clearer. "This year will be a challenge," he says. "We have to maintain the momentum we have and we seem to be entering a climate of doom and gloom with fuel costs and mortgage rates. We're now hearing stuff in the clubhouse like 'oh, stuff it, I'm going to live in Oz,' and while Auckland clubs have done very well out of immigration, the numbers coming in aren't as high as they were, so we're now having to think outside the square and work very hard to get people within our area to join.
"But when we talk about appealing to new generations, we're not talking about X or Y, it's people in their 40s or so who have done the kids and done the house, because if anything stops you playing golf, it's those. So, for now, the new market is the person who plays maybe 10 to 15 clubs; the green-fee player. We have to find a way to reach these people, they are your bread and butter members, the ones with the income and the time. But at the same time we still have to bring young people in and teach them the game. If you can do that, they will probably leave - it's very rare for people to play through their 20s and 30s - but they will eventually come back."
Akarana has tried a range of membership options and isn't shy about promoting a convivial bar in the middle of a dry area. They even commissioned a study on youth attitudes to the game (naturally young people want the course available at little cost, 24-7) but Hackett is hopeful other clubs will join the Golf Nation initiative if only for mutual support.
"We have to start doing something. I mean, I do think golf will remain popular, but it will have to go through the next cycle like everything else. Akarana has been here 80-odd years so we've seen these cycles before, we've just got to adapt. If we fail to do so, well, we know what happens then - you fall by the wayside. To my mind, golf clubs might seem slow to change but we always seem to get there in the end."
Further up Dominion Rd, the walls of Maungakiekie's clubhouse are heavy with reminders of the grand days last century when the club was draped around its former home, One Tree Hill, including shots of the day they hosted the Prince of Wales and Lord Mountbatten. But now they are having to hang signs on their fences to coax new members inside.
As with Akarana, a multimillion-dollar course upgrade cost Maungakiekie some of its members - about 100 people who didn't fancy a few months of having to cross the width of two fairways to reach their next tee - but general manager Mark Thompson says the rest are right behind their efforts to grow again.
"Our average age would be in the 60s, very much so, but those veterans and the womens' section are very strong. They're one of the strengths of the club and they're mainly locals so they have a very personal stake in the club. The amount of hours they put in, not just on the course but in voluntary work, is extraordinary. When they're all here and playing it sort of makes you feel like all the work is worthwhile."
While Thompson has doubts that many green-fee players are going to pay to a full club subscription to play the courses they already do for cheaper rates, he's pleased to see something being tried.
His club has tried everything from summer memberships to group women's rates, social memberships and their current scheme of reserved memberships - a pay-as-you-play plan where you front up with $450 and then pay a reduced green-fee when you turn up. He has a few more ideas up his sleeve, such as renting out half the clubhouse to businesses and building some onsite motel accommodation, but Thompson sees one area which should be repaired immediately: "Image".
"What New Zealand Golf has discovered is that for the itinerant golfer, the welcome is almost non-existent. The welcome notices aren't there. "Then when they get on to the course the welcome they get from the members can leave a lot to be desired and when they get to the bar it's hardly open arms greeting them. We have to work hard to change that, but then with people there's only so much you can do - some are naturally welcoming, others need to take their happy pills before they get up. Even so, every member needs to be aware that you only get one chance to make that first impression, these are things we must be very careful about."
A prime example of the person such measures are aimed at is Toni Cooper, a dad, DJ and music promoter who is as urbane as you could wish a 35-year-old to be, and sporty with it. His path into the game was fairly classic.
"I had to give up full-time rugby, I had a really bad knee injury, and joined up with a couple of mates who were going hard out on the driving range. That's how I got into it really. Driving ranges are like training wheels to your really good players, but they're great for your hacker and really good fun for everyone else. You can just have a few swings and behave in a way that'd get you thrown off most courses.
"I spent a good six months or so doing that before I went out on a course, the public nine-hole course in Papakura. It's rough as guts and always has been, it doesn't go in for real golf etiquette. Then we started going on golfing safaris, to South Head or somewhere and making a day of it. If it's a beautiful day it's definitely something ... that's how I caught the bug.
When you get that golfer's bug you start trying as hard as you can to better your game and get out on the course as much as you can, maybe once or twice a week. Then it sort of died down a bit but now I'm back into it and trying to get my handicap back down again." It was this drive to improve that pushed Cooper from being a green-fee player to joining Waitakere Golf Club: "We call it the Goat Track, it's really hilly, so it's become more of a guys' club."
Even playing at the cheaper courses like Chamberlain in Mt Albert saw him easily toting up $100 a week in green fees, so an annual subscription of $750 at Waitakere made sense. It also freed up some cash for fashion.
"The clothes are part of the whole golf culture thing, like the etiquette, and I quite like it. The whole look that guys like Tiger Woods and Michael Campbell have introduced has definitely made golf a lot cooler. I get a bit of flak being seen around town in golf pants and collar with a vest, but I like it. Some people don't give a shit, but I like to look quite smart on the course."
Unfortunately, the effort he puts in may also have an element of necessity: golf doesn't have a great track record of accepting difference. "Certain people, or certain Europeans, certainly don't like blacks coming in and playing, and we have a little bit of that culture here [New Zealand]w.
I've been playing golf for a little while so that doesn't worry me now, but when I first started it was a bit weird. You would get checked out and stuff like that." Which raises an issue spoken about only in hushed tones. Race has become a clubhouse talking-point, especially in Auckland where clubs like Pakuranga and Howick have received enormous boosts from Asian immigration.
According to Hackett, Akarana got a lifeline when a Korean community settled in the area. He's got the welcome mat out for plenty more so Akarana can finish renovating its clubhouse. It's just one of those adaptations he says old members will have to accept. It's these head-in-the-sand attitudes that will be MacGowan's greatest obstacle.
"If we keep going the way we are now, our long-term income will just continue declining. Sure, clubs can hire themselves out for weddings and other activities, as they should, but even capital expenditure like irrigation can cost you up to $700,000 and that's a lot of weddings. We've got a plan that could help and I've got the next six months to convince about 80 clubs to join, which is a serious challenge for a sport as traditional as golf ...
"Do I really want to spend those six months going around from Poverty Bay to Ekatahuna selling this? Well, probably not, but we have to try. And if we get knocked back, well, we'll just change the budget next year and spend more money on the young kids. At least we might be able to help them get better."
Or maybe he could spend the cash attracting more of those rainbows?