How Golf Got Stuck in the Rough

Not that long ago, golf was considered the activity of choice for corporate bonding and the upwardly mobile aiming to look successful. Today companies are relying less on glad-handing on the links, and many young people are cool to a pursuit viewed as time-intensive and elitist. The result: Golf is suffering from an exodus of players, and courses are closing. The number of U.S. golfers has dropped 24 percent from its peak in 2002, to about 23 million players last year, according to Pellucid, a consulting company that specializes in the business of golf. It found that in 2013 alone, the game lost 1.1 million players.

Given the sport’s costs and inherent difficulty—while a video game on a smartphone can be mastered in as little as a few hours, golf can require years of practice to play well—that slide is unlikely to end anytime soon. “The game is hard, the game can take a lot of time, and it’s expensive,” says McRedmond Morelli, founder of Boxgroove in Bellevue, Wash., which gives its 50,000 members access to a network of private golf clubs. “There is no equivalent to the bunny slope on golf.”