No Cheap Shots

Rudy Duran is a golf teacher whose most famous pupil came to him at age 4 when Duran was the head pro at Heartwell, an 18-hole par-three public course in Long Beach. The young player also took lessons from Duran at El Dorado and Skylinks, two municipal courses in Long Beach.

For six years, Duran worked with the kid, who got better and better.

That kid was Tiger Woods and his story is a little bit of history that might never be repeated.

Judging from the cart path that golf is heading down now, there’s a chance we’ll never see another one like him again, rising up through the grass roots and blossoming on a worldwide scene. At least that’s what Duran fears when he considers a golfing climate in which there are too many players trying to play on too few public courses charging fees that are too high.

“It’s a big problem, and it’s getting worse,” Duran said. “There’s no access for the kids. Like in the L.A. area, one, they can’t afford it, and two, when they might even remotely afford it, there’s no time for them.

“People have been brought to golf because of Tiger’s exposure . . . the same way Arnold Palmer brought people to golf. People are aware and they’re going to go out and try golf. But if there’s no access, they’re gone. You’re not going to go to a full movie theater three nights in a row. You move on to something else.

“And it’s the same for adults. Sometimes it’s $100 to play golf. I don’t really know how to fix that.”

Well, there is one way, Duran said.

“You have to be wealthy, basically.”

And so it goes for golf, which seems to be saying “Give me your huddled, anonymous foursomes. . . . Give me your average Joes. . . . Give me the key to your safe-deposit box.”

Golf, the would-be Populist sport, announces its goal as reaching out to the masses, representing itself as Everyman’s game, opening its arms in a cheery welcome.

It’s a noble mission, all right, but golf may find that it’s not going to be easy getting there. At least right now, there’s one thing you have to say about golf:

It’s still a country club.

There are more people playing more golf than ever before, according to the National Golf Foundation, which tabulated the number of golfers in the U.S. at 26.9 million--about 14% of the population.

So what’s the income group of golfers that is growing the most? Households earning $75,000 and higher, according to research by the Sporting Goods Business Network.

Apparently, you don’t have to be rich to play golf, but it certainly helps.

Rod Warnick, a specialist in trends analysis for recreation and sports at the University of Massachusetts, said this definitely represents a trend.

“Golf is still an upscale sport,” Warnick said.

Peter Titlebaum of the Department of Health and Sports Science at the University of Dayton said green fees are priced according to basic economic principles. Simply put, it’s what the market will bear.

“They’re going to stay that way until everybody gets upset about it. . . . but who’s going to get upset?,” Titlebaum said. “You’re outside, you’re in the sun, you like what you’re doing. I don’t see too much unrest. It’s a comfortable norm.”

Golf’s green fees fall nicely in line when compared to the cost of some other sports activities, such as professional spectator sports, according to Titlebaum. He conducted a survey of NBA ticket prices for a party of four, taking into account tickets in poor locations. He found the cheapest price for four seats was $150 in Denver. The most expensive was $297 for the New York Knicks’ home games.

Titlebaum’s conclusion is that golf really isn’t alone in its high cost.

“It’s no longer sports for everyone,” he said. “It’s sports for those who can afford it.

“How do you classify golf as a sport for everyone when you have those green fees involved? How are you supposed to be good at the game if you can’t play it? It’s still a big business and a country club sport. Golf would love to see itself as an urban sport, but it’s never going to be. What are you going to do? Put kids on a bus, put their clubs on there to go play? It’s a terrible picture I’m painting.”

There are some movements trying to paint over that picture. The most ambitious is a project called the First Tee, overseen by the World Golf Foundation and dedicated to creating 100 junior golf programs and facilities through public and private partnerships in the next two years.

According to the First Tee, less than 2% of children ages 12-17 are introduced to golf each year.

Former President George Bush, honorary chairman of First Tee, lauded efforts by golf organizations and associations to introduce the game to broad segments of the population, but he acknowledged that affordable access has remained a persistent problem.

At least the First Tee has some heavy hitters behind it: The PGA Tour, the PGA of America, the LPGA, the United States Golf Assn. and Augusta National Golf Club.

While the need to increase access to public courses is not in dispute, some believe golf’s image is just fine the way it is. In an article in a recent issue of the New Republic, the executive editor of the American Prospect wrote that the mass middle-class pursuit of golf reflects the continuing evolution of our society.

“If the typical golfer was once affluent, white and early middle-age [Jack Nicklaus in his prime, let’s say], there is no longer a single obvious type,” wrote Scott Stossel.

“To be sure, there are the retirees [still white and affluent], and the boomers [mostly white and affluent], who comprise 45% of the golfing population and are fueling the trend. But there are also lots of black golfers, women golfers and families that golf together. Golf, in other words, is beginning to look more like America: diverse, multicultural, and largely middle class.”

It’s a pleasing point of view, but statistics do not reflect such a picture of golf moving steadily toward becoming a largely middle-class sport. In fact, the biggest increase in the number of participants playing golf the last five years is from those households with incomes of at least $75,000--up 12%.

So if you have this urban problem, where the fees are high, the courses are few and the demand is high, what’s the solution, short of busing players to rural areas to play the courses there?

Duran said local politicians need to get involved. Government subsidies have been mentioned. More courses need to be built. Of course, how any of this might be done is about as easy to figure out as an 80-foot putt over a mound with 15 feet of break on a green that’s only slightly slower than the Indianapolis 500.

In San Luis Obispo, Duran owns one course and leases another from the county. Both are daily-fee courses with green fees ranging from $27 on weekends to 50 cents for juniors who come through his program.

Because of his work with Woods, Duran has a special place in his heart for junior golfers, but he emphasized that adults have similar problem as the youngsters in hunting for tee times and affordable playing fees.

“If I had to pay $50 a day, I couldn’t afford to practice often enough to be a golf pro,” Duran said. “If you’re a 20-year-old and you want to practice enough to be a golf pro, you can’t pay $250 for five days a week of practice. Who can afford that anyway? It’s tough. It’s real tough.”

Chances are it’s going to get a lot tougher. Not to mention more expensive. What do you call it when you have a lot of people who are trying to locate a place to do something really hard to find that costs a lot and even if they do find it they probably can’t afford to do it very often? These days, you call it golf.