Time's Are a Changing
Here is another blog donated by our nice clean and shiney forum. So a big thank you to Scott for 'aquiring' this interesting look at changing times. We don't know where he stole it from but whoever is responsible for this passage could have a point.
IT COULD be described as a typically Scottish male upbringing. Rob Hendry was introduced to golf at a young age, played throughout his school career and chose his university - St Andrews - because it was where he could best indulge his sporting passion.
He played two or three times a week at least and achieved a six handicap - although he insists he was "better than that". He adds: "Although I say it myself, I was quite good and I really, really loved it."
How times have changed. At the age of 38, Hendry, now a computer programmer with Standard Life in Edinburgh, has not picked up his clubs in anger for the past two years. His golfing career is moribund, if not deceased.
How did that happen? "I met a woman," he said. "I wanted my future wife to play golf, but although she tried it, she really didn't take to it. She didn't try to stop me playing, but I began to play less and less.
"I played in the evenings, but then we had kids, and you have to get them ready for bed. What with the family and working full-time, the golf had to go.
"The trouble is it takes three hours minimum for 18 holes and often a lot longer. You are out of the house for half a day, and I can't spare the time anymore."
It's a familiar tale from the domestic battleground, and although some men may disagree, family and work usually have priority over what American author Mark Twain called a "good walk spoiled". But it is the desertion of men like Hendry which is provoking a crisis in golf clubs across the country, and some radical changes in the way people enjoy the game.
Golf is Scotland's other national sport. Scotland is its traditional home, where its arcane rules and etiquette were honed on coastal links and the game took its modern shape. It also spawned a network of hundreds of private golf clubs throughout the country which, depending on your point of view, were predominantly male refuges from the stresses of modern life or misogynistic bastions of wealthy elitism and appalling V-neck jumpers. But where the nation's private golf clubs were once booming, with new members having to wait years for entry to the exalted ranks, most now have financially crippling vacancies.
With the combined pressures of disapproving partners, family life and increased working hours all taking their toll on the Scottish golfer, many clubs are now being reduced to slashing the costs of joining to unprecedentedly low levels to attract new lifeblood.
Next month, the world's best golfers will be in Scotland to contest the Open Championship over the famously ferocious Carnoustie links in Angus. But even while multi-millionaires such as Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Scotland's Colin Montgomerie compete for the sport's greatest prize, the grassroots game so wrapped up in the Scottish identity will be engaged in its own battle for survival. It seems legions of golf 'widows' are finally getting their long-awaited revenge.
"Golf is a thoroughly national game; it is as Scotch as haggis, cockieleekie, high cheekbones or rowanberry jam." So wrote the Victorian journalist, essayist, poet and sports enthusiast Andrew Lang. But Lang had no idea then of the pressures that would mount on 21st-century Scots trying to maintain the traditions of the game their ancestors gave to the planet.
The type of old-school player Lang had in mind was someone like the Angus GP and member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St Andrews, the game's governing body, who spoke to Scotland on Sunday about the missing thousands only on condition that he was quoted as an "old bufty" - definition: an ancient, blazer-wearing committee member whose job is to inflexibly uphold club rules and tradition in increasingly deserted clubhouses.
"My father played the game and I think his father played too and I have passed that on to my two sons and daughter," he said. "It is a very social game and it teaches you how to behave in public. I was lucky in that my wife came from a golfing family so she understood the need to play golf. But a lot of the younger generation are being dragged off to the supermarkets on Saturdays by their wives. They want their husbands around and, I have to say, I do feel a little bit sorry for them."
On the surface, club golf in Scotland does not appear to be in too bad a shape. There are still 260,000 men, women and juniors paying annual subscriptions to around 670 clubs, from the Northern Isles to the Borders. But they are now dwarfed by the growing numbers of players - the current estimate by the Scottish Golf Union, the amateur game's governing body, is 350,000 - who only play the game occasionally. Many are men with young families who resent paying hundreds of pounds to join a club and then hundreds of pounds more in annual subscriptions to play just a handful of rounds.
Reports from across Scotland are also suggesting members are playing far less frequently, with a study by the Golf Research Group, the world's leading golf industry consultancy, finding that average rounds per course in Scotland have fallen to around 23,000 - far below the UK average of 31,000. Clubs themselves have haemorrhaged about 5,000 paying members over the past five years - about three a day - and there are serious concerns that the trickle may turn into a flood.
Prestigious clubs such as Muirfield in East Lothian, Royal Troon in Ayrshire, and Royal Burgess in Edinburgh, still have long waiting lists because of the social cachet that membership brings to Scotland's professional and business classes. But around half of Scottish clubs say they now have no waiting lists and a further 37% say their lists are in decline.
Hamish Grey, the chief executive of the SGU, says the golf club system is being undermined by wider cultural changes in society. "Not as many children are being born as in the past with one report saying that there will soon be 15% fewer 15-year-olds in the general population," he said. "Those that are around have many other attractions to choose from. Then there is still the feeling that golf clubs are exclusive places that are difficult to join. People feel they can't get into a club, so they don't try. There is a real opportunity there for clubs to go out and market themselves."
Peter McEvoy, the former Great Britain Walker Cup captain, who was brought up in Gourock, in Ayrshire, agrees with the analysis that club golf is facing two major problems: "Cost and time," he says. "Many people with busy lives just cannot spare the four to five hours it takes to get in a full 18 holes these days.
"Many people play the game when they are young and again when they get towards retirement age. But there is a whole swathe who love golf, but grow up, get married, have kids and busy working lives in which time is at a premium."
Of course, golf may be losing out in the exodus away from the fairways, but child care experts say family life and society as a whole is the winner. Jack O'Sullivan, author of a guide to being a dad called He's Having A Baby, said children who spent more time with their fathers are less likely to be involved in crime and less likely to have emotional problems later in life. "When working hours are longer and men decide to spend more time with their children then leisure time gets squeezed," O'Sullivan said. "That can only be bad news for golf clubs."
However, not only men are affected by the pressures of modern life. One of the ironies of golf is that while the women's professional circuit is flourishing with a new breed of glamorous young stars attracting TV coverage and money to the game, female club golfers too are deserting in droves.
The latest survey by the Ladies' Golf Union of Great Britain and Ireland found five out of six clubs in Scotland had vacancies for female members. Worryingly, the average lady member of a Scottish golf club is aged between 55 and 64 and the average number of young girls per club is only seven, compared with 58 among boys. More than half the respondents (54%) to the survey cited lack of time as the major problem.
Another factor taking its toll on the club system is that while membership is, at best, static, the number of courses is increasing. More than 100, many of them pay-and-play without any requirement to join, have been built in Scotland over the past 12 years, meaning those willing to be traditional golf club members are being spread more thinly, affecting many clubs' bottom lines.
There are other new attractions too, especially for golfers who do not relish the capricious Scottish weather. This month two new state-of-the-art "virtual golf" simulator centres are being opened in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Players can play some of the world's top courses on giant screens using real clubs and balls. But traditional golf clubs are fighting back with a range of new tactics, and nowhere is the battle being fought more aggressively than in Edinburgh, where there is fierce competition for the golfers' pound.
One club, Craigmillar Park, has recently gained 170 new members after completely scrapping its £1,140 joining fee for a limited period. Merchants of Edinburgh, the Craiglockhart club which is celebrating its centenary this year, is offering the first 100 new members to join an annual subscription of three guineas (£3.15) - the 1907 price.
Craigmillar Park's secretary, Stewart Leslie, said the offer had been "extremely successful". He added: "We got 170 new members. In fact, we now have a waiting list. Although it was not our intention to do so, we did take some from other clubs, but most of the new recruits were new to the game. This worked really well for us, and if you have a good idea you have to go with it."
It is former stalwarts like Rob Hendry that clubs are looking for. "The days of playing two or three times a week have probably gone," he said, "but as the kids get older, I hope to get back to it a little bit more. I took one of the kids to a children's course last weekend and I really felt the urge." Now all he has to do is break the news to his wife.
Typical, an insightful article about the decline of our game and we illustrate it with men playing golf in quilts.
The way we were...
Ten other things the modern family man is no longer able to do...
• Snooze in an armchair after Sunday lunch.
• Give his wife her housekeeping money in cash from his pay-packet.
• Treat the local pub as an alternative living room.
• Sleep though the night while the baby is crying.
• Wear a bunnet.
• Wallow in complete ignorance of how a vacuum cleaner/iron/washing machine works.
• Not know the location of the nearest Tesco.
• Be left alone to read the paper in peace.
• Sit in the garden without actually gardening.
• Feign an allergy to gloss paint.
6/22/2007 11:45:42 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00) 
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