The International Golf Community Is Here To Stay

Padraig Harrington’s second consecutive major win at the PGA Championship means ¾ of this year’s majors were won by an international player.

Europe has won seven out of the last ten Ryder Cups, the last two of which could be considered a complete massacre.

Had Justin Leonard not made a ridiculous 60-foot putt on the 17^th hole in 1999, the European team would have won eight out of the last ten Ryder Cups.

Other than Tiger Woods, who as we all know is a one man force dominating the PGA Tour, the majors have been dominated by international players. 

In the past five years, aside from Woods, American golfers have won just four majors—compared to the nine majors won by international players.

In the ten years prior to that, again taking Tiger Woods out of the picture, American golfers won eighteen majors—compared to twelve majors won by their international counterparts.

So what is happening to American golfers? 

Is the game becoming more international or are we simply not as good as we once were? 

I don’t believe American golfers aren't as good as they once were—but I do believe that the economic dynamics of the world are now being mirrored on the PGA Tour. 

Just as the world’s wealth is being dispersed across many more countries, the pool of young international golfers has also been growing. 

This has been building up for years now, and it has become increasingly evident that the international contingent on the PGA Tour have at least levelled out with the US contingent—if they have not already surpassed them.

Unfortunately, golf is a luxury almost solely afforded to the middle-class and wealthy segments of the population. 

15-20 years ago, the middle-class and wealthy segments of the population in America were significantly larger than any other country in the world.  Wealth and prosperity was more widespread in America than just about any other place on the planet. 

Thus, 10-15 years ago when America was at the height of its economic prosperity, America had a significantly larger percentage of the population playing golf than the combined international community. 

This provided America with a far larger pool of golfers from which to extract talent than was available to the international community.

However, in the past 10-15 years that has changed.

Economically, the world has flattened out.  

Countries such as Ireland, Korea, Australia, India and South Africa have experienced unprecedented economic growth in the past 10-15 years and the prosperity and spending power of their populations has increased tenfold.

Again, golf is a game typically enjoyed by the wealthier segments of the population, and as wealth and prosperity became more widespread in the countries mentioned, so did the number of young kids afforded the luxury of playing golf. 

This has increased the overall pool of international golfers, to the point where the combined pool has caught up and possibly surpassed that of American golfers.

On top of the international golf community growing by leaps and bounds, the middle class in America has been drastically shrinking over the past 10-15 years—taking away an entire chunk of the golfing community.

In America ,it is astronomically expensive to join a country club. A country club offers young golfers the best opportunity to practice and work on their games at superior golf courses with impeccable practice facilities.

Children whose family belongs to a country club are given the opportunity to practice whenever they want and for however long they want. But, this is quite obviously a luxury only available to the upper-middle class and wealthy echelons of the population. 

Public courses in America have also become quite expensive. 

A round of golf at a decent public course can cost anywhere between $50-$120 per round.

So, if a young player was to play 6 days a week on a public course which is priced at the cheaper end of the spectrum, his or her family is looking at a fee of $1,200 per month—and that is not even considering the cost of clubs, golf balls, golf cloths, lessons, etc.

In America, we are in a recession.  But the American economy has historically run in cycles and we are currently in one of those down cycles that we have seen time after time over the past fifty years—that is nothing new and is not the major problem.

The major problem is the virtual disappearance of the middle class, an entire class of Americans that used to be able to afford golf.

Over the past two years the combined US inflation rate has been nearly 8%. As a whole, American worker’s wages have increased by a rate of 2% over the same time period.  That means on average, we as a country have gotten roughly 6% poorer in the past two years. 

Now, this stat does not affect the day to day lives of the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy as much as it does the middle class. 

After all, a household with an income of $500,000 or more will not have to put away the golf clubs because of a 7% decrease in their wealth, whereas a household with an income of $125,000 might very well have to store away the clubs for a brighter day—due to their decrease in wealth and spending power.

For a middle class family in America, modern day necessities such as filling the car with gas, paying the mortgage, paying for health insurance and figuring out a way to send the kids to a college that costs upwards of $40,000 per year have taken priority over joining a country club—or simply playing golf in general.

In America, we also do not have the same government sponsored sports programs that are available to children in other countries.

For example, in Australia there is a program called High Performance, overseen by the government’s Sports Commission. This program provides talented young golfers with the financial support required to play golf. This support covers coaching, equipment and awards talented young golfers a genuine opportunity to make a run at being a professional golfer.

In America you must either be very wealthy or lucky enough to find a wealthy sponsor to be awarded the same type of financial support offered by the government in Australia.

The result of this program has been clear as day—there are more talented young Australian golfers on the PGA Tour now than at any other time in the history of the tour.

Golf has indeed expanded around the world, along with the dispersion of wealth, and I believe that we are now clearly seeing the changing world dynamics mirrored within the PGA Tour.

Lets also not forget that we are about 10-20 years away from China entering the international golf community, and basic math will tell you that a country with 1.3 billion people is likely to produce more talented golfers than a country with 300 million. 

Golf equipment and course design companies have already been frantically trying to position themselves in the Chinese market for several years now. 

It is not by any means a stretch to believe that in our kid’s lifetime, they will see some form of President’s Cup where it is China vs. The World—the United States falling within the ‘World’ team. 

Taking Tiger Woods aside, could we have seen the last of the American dominance of the PGA Tour? 

Time will tell but I believe that barring any significant, earth-shattering world event, we are already past the point of no return.

As the world continues to flatten out in terms of economic prosperity, the geographic dynamics of the PGA Tour will take a similar shape.

We will continue to see a larger percentage of events won by international players, and we will continue to see international players coming from different countries.

We will see players coming from some of the Eastern European countries that have recently joined the European Union. We will see more golfers coming from Ireland, India, Australia and various Asian countries—and of course we will see a significant number of golfers coming out of China.

It is an exciting time for golf, as the PGA Tour continues to take on a more global form and the competition continues to improve along with the growing number of international golfers.

But it is also the end of an era for American dominance of the PGA Tour.