The Resurgence of Golf

The Pandemic Increased Traffic on the Fairways

by Warren Grant

There are roughly 47 billion blades of grass on an average-sized, 150-acre golf course, give or take a couple billion. And with an estimated 16,000+ golf courses in the United States, well, that’s a lot of blades that need sun, water, NPK, mowing, aerating and protection from both chinch bugs and your brother-in-law’s ginormous divots.

There was a lot of care and feeding of grass blades in the 90s and early/mid 2000s, when the first Baby Boomers were entering pre-retirement age and the golf industry experts aggressively predicted that the United States needed to build one golf course a day to meet the expected demand of all that fresh leisure time and lost golf balls.

Long story short, the experts were sadly wrong. There just wasn’t the demand to justify all that new beautiful grass. And on Monday, September 29, 2008, the demand dramatically ebbed even further, with annual rounds dropping by the millions the first two years of the great recession.

For the next decade, the lush fairways of the United States were sorely underutilized and even written off by cynical pundits at national publications. That is until all that beautiful grass was called on to save the country’s sanity as the year 2020 dawned bleak and isolating.

It was golf, with its wide-open spaces and plenty of room to socially distance, pull a cart, walk with a carry bag, or ride single in a golf cart, that became one of the very few outlets where people could get out of the house for a precious four hours of fresh air and exercise and to feel whole.

The results for golf growth in 2020 were astounding, and that tailwind is pushing up rounds this year, as well. According to the National Golf Foundation, there were roughly 502 million rounds of golf played across the United States in 2020. That number reflects an increase of 14% compared to 2019 — an even more remarkable stat given half of the country’s courses were temporarily closed in March and April due to the coronavirus, causing a loss of 20 million spring rounds.

Additionally, the number of people who played on a golf course for the first time in 2020 soared to three million, a 50% increase over the previous seven years, when an average of two million beginners picked up the game per year.

Here’s a look at how three national-class golf communities exemplify the resurgence of golf in the United States.