"To combat the retraction in growth, the World Golf Foundation—the United Nations of the golf industry—announced yesterday its version of the government’s $700 billion bailout plan. Over the next five years, fledgling golfers at some 5,000 U.S. golf facilities will be able to buy five lessons (covering basic skills, rules, etiquette and values) for $99. The plan is designed to attract 700,000 new golfers by 2013 and to generate some $700 million in new golf spending. "

pulled from Golfdotcom blog.

Will it work?

Doomed to failure.

It's long been said that as many or more golfers give up the game every year than there are new golfers who take up the game. I believe that the most effective way to grow the game is for organizations such as Golf 20/20 to concentrate their efforts on retaining the golfers who are already playing the game, rather than attempting to find new players. Unless you can find the reasons that so many golfers are leaving the game, and come up with viable reasons to keep them, growing the game by attracting new golfers is like trying to fill a water bucket with a fast leak.

The effort is typical of the organization that once described its goal as doubling the number of golfers in the US by the year 2020. If you've been paying attention over the past five years, you'll notice that that goal disappeared from their mission statement a few years ago as the reality of dwindling numbers of golfers became more and more apparent. I predict lots of fanfare and speechifying, and corporate types in suits handing out awards to each other, but at the end of the day, the effort will accomplish nothing. In five years, the numbers of US golfers will be as flat as it has been for the past ten years. With the economy in shambles, we're likely to see a ten to twenty percent reduction.