While golf club memberships have stabilized in Europe, full-course golfing has declined by 30 percent over the past decade. According to John Bushell, managing director of Sports Marketing Surveys SMS, the drop does not signal a decline in golfing overall. Instead, it signals a broadening of the ways in which golf is consumed. In the U.K., for example, total golf participation now exceeds golfing done on a full-length golf course by a factor of three to one. Many golf federations have begun focusing on non-traditional modes of play. Flexible golf is played on six- or nine-hole courses. Fast golf has modified the rules to gain speed. Family golf and female golf aim at the respective consumers. As a case in point, total female play in the developed market of the U.K. still stands at only 15 percent, whereas it has reached a ratio of more than 30 percent in Sweden, France, Germany and especially Austria. Finally, there is fun golf, which seeks to do away with golf’s stodgy atmosphere and restore the notion of having a good time. The figures used by SMS exclusively concern golfers registered with national federations acknowledged by the European Golf Association.

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