As promised, Darius Hatami of HVS Golf Services has published “The Path to Growth,” a collection of ideas that are supposed to help the golf industry steer itself back into the financial fast lane. Truth be told, though, Hatami sounds like someone who’s still searching for answers, not like someone who’s found them.
At least in the short term, Hatami suspects, our industry’s true growth markets will be in foreign nations. To grow the game in the U.S., he believes, we must devise ways to attract the nearly 92 percent of the population that currently doesn’t golf. Inevitably, however, such a path leads us in the direction of kids, women and minorities, all groups that have historically resisted golf’s advances.
“A catalyst is definitely needed to reform the thought process of what golf is and what it can be,” Hatami concludes. Unfortunately, he doesn’t identify what the catalyst might be. He suggests that golf needs to find its version of snowboarding, the youthful pursuit that’s enabled the ski industry to shake off its winters of discontent. But he also understands that golf, a business that “needs to simultaneously embrace its tradition while also embracing the future,” doesn’t trust the demographics that might ultimately save it.