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The New Testament of Golf - "Flogton"

G-BOB said:
If there is an additional contributing factor to the slowdown in new golfers, it has to be the ever increasing price of equipment.
For a while there it seemed like the top level manufacturers figured they could just keep pumping up the price and people would keep buying. It worked for a number of years but not any more.

Mind you, the golf companies shot themselves in the foot when they started bringing out "new improved" models every six months. The leftovers from the initial sales hype started appearing at huge discounts and golfers I think began to keep their wallets in their pockets until the new driver they wanted was discounted.
I'l spare y'all my rant on what the major manufacturers have done to the small/medium sized golf shop.

Finally, in response to an earlier post mentioning that Polara golf balls "don't work," I will have to disagree and point the nay-sayer to the golf lab robotic tests as shown on video on youtube. THe new version of the Polara ball will do what it promises if you remember to align the ball [marking] to the target.
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I completely disagree with this entire post. Minus the Polara golf balls because I have no experience.

First of all, the price of drivers have dropped compared to what they used to be. Remember the CGB Max? The Ping Rapture? Considering how easy online ordering is now, people can get recent equipment for extremely cheap.

Secondly, companies are not shooting themselves in the foot by releasing a ton of equipment. Their marketers have crunched the numbers, and if it wouldnt make them money, they wouldnt do it. More models means cheaper old models for the consumer. This must be your rant for the small/medium sized golf shop, because this factor helps the consumer more than the golf shop, and its clear youre bitter.
 
JNRadio said:
even $500 is a little deceiving as i believe a stay at the PB resort is required in order to play and I think that is $495 a night...
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WOW they must of turned it into a resort , as years ago you could still call and get a T time .
But its no concern of mine as I will never play it :D
 
Once i get someone involved they dont stop. Golf is addicting leave it as is.
 
Off season we get as low as $10 bucks a round. Even now plenty of web sites for discount golf
 
[QUOTE From Thainer 21

Cut budgets, cut costs, cut prices.[/QUOTE]

Did you forget cut JOBS?

It's clear from your post that you don't give a hoot about anything other than how cheap you can get that new club or how little you can pay for a round.
Of course prices have come down recently. Why do you think that is?
Could it be because the market is being flooded with new models etc.
Maybe it's because a drop in sales has finally forced the mfgs. to lower their prices or face mounting inventory.

Do you have any idea how much initial profit used to be in the sales price of these new improved models? The mfgs. decided to turn out new models faster, get maximum profit for a shorter lifespan and then repeat the process.
Meanwhile leaving the retailers to clean up the mess when the discounts started. Not that you care of course.
 
G-BOB said:
From Thainer 21

Cut budgets, cut costs, cut prices.
Click to expand...

Did you forget cut JOBS?

It's clear from your post that you don't give a hoot about anything other than how cheap you can get that new club or how little you can pay for a round.
Of course prices have come down recently. Why do you think that is?
Could it be because the market is being flooded with new models etc.
Maybe it's because a drop in sales has finally forced the mfgs. to lower their prices or face mounting inventory.

Do you have any idea how much initial profit used to be in the sales price of these new improved models? The mfgs. decided to turn out new models faster, get maximum profit for a shorter lifespan and then repeat the process.
Meanwhile leaving the retailers to clean up the mess when the discounts started. Not that you care of course.
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Wait, what?

Cutting costs on maintaining golf courses can increase green fee play, increase revenue, and potentially lead to more jobs. Golf costs too much and takes too much time to play. Thats all.




Flogton sounds like it would suck.
 
Having followed the career of Scott McNealy who I have met a few times, I doubt he expects Flogtron to take hold. I would bet money, that group is doing it in hopes of facilitating the conversation - how to make golf more accessible. Ease of play, cost, separate rules, etc. are all part of it.
 
I agree with most, the cost of play is the biggest hurdle. I have been taking my 20 year old step son to play with me alot lately, but honestly if I was paying, he wouldn't be playing...LOL.

Even at small courses weekend rates are $30-$40 bucks a round with cart and unfortunatly around here you are not going to walk on the weekends because you would have groups in carts waiting on you all the time.

So if you say $40 bucks and you play once a week that's $160 a month, add a couple of dozen balls for a beginning golfer who will lose more than their share and you are at about $225 a month...that's alot of cash to try to get the younger generation involved in the game.

Honestly, if I hadn't grown up with my dad being a member of a club where I could play all I wanted for free (we had our own cart and just rented space at the course) I don't know if I would have gotten into it as much as I did.

I would like to see a lot of "pitch and putt" style lighted courses built where you could charge $10-$15 bucks and learn the game from the short game up.
 
JNRadio said:
What you you make of this from today's Wall Street Journal?

It's no secret that golf, as an industry, is lagging. Rounds played in the U.S. have been declining slowly for nearly a decade. More courses are closing than opening. More players have flowed out of the game than flowed in, says the National Golf Foundation. There may be many reasons for this, including the down economy and sociological changes, but some in the golf industry have begun to wonder aloud whether the rules of the game are really the problem.



Their aim is not to replace USGA golf, but to provide an alternative, with the expectation that many Flogton players would eventually migrate to the regular game, the way tee-ballers grow into baseball.

The most radical vision for a New World Order in golf is the Flogton project being pushed by a group of Silicon Valley executives whose front man is Scott McNealy, the co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems. In their view, the U.S. Golf Association's sanctioned game is simply too difficult to attract and retain enough to keep the game growing.

In particular, the Flogtonites argue, golf needs better ways to appeal to videogame-enamored kids and to casual adult golfers who lack the time, inclination or athletic talent to master the game. "We've got the courses. The courses are beautiful and under-utilized. There need to be alternative golf formats that will bring more people out to play these courses," Mr. McNealy said last month when he unveiled the proposal.

In Flogton (that's "not golf" spelled backward), players could take their pick from several sets of rules to match their skill levels. The most restrictive format might follow strict USGA rules of play but allow souped-up balls and clubs. Mr. McNealy said this format would be popular with seniors or others who are happy with USGA golf but can't hit the ball as far as they used to, or would like to.

The least restrictive forms of play would set purists' teeth on edge: teeing up shots in the fairway, legalizing one mulligan per hole, allowing 6-foot "bumps" (no nearer the hole) to get relief from trees and other obstacles, and requiring the second shot from a bunker to be thrown. These games would be geared primarily toward kids or rank beginners. For each format, Flogton handicaps could be established. Different social mores would also be encouraged, from trash-talking during backswings to wearing cargo shorts.

But it wouldn't be "goofy golf," Mr. McNealy insisted. The rules for each format would be clearly established and enforced. "If you hit a bad shot, it will still be a bad shot that you have to take personal responsibility for. That's the core value of golf. No excuses allowed," he said.

Mr. McNealy is himself a three-handicapper. Some of Flogton's other backers are also low-handicappers, including John Donahoe, CEO of eBay Inc., and Bill Campbell, chairman and former CEO of Intuit.

Their aim is not to replace USGA golf, but to provide an alternative, with the expectation that many Flogton players would eventually migrate to the regular game, the way tee-ballers grow into baseball. For others, however, Flogton might be the only style of golf needed or desired. Courses could easily accommodate both styles of play, Mr. McNealy argued. Flogton play would be faster, which courses could cope with by designating certain times or nines for Flogton play. Flogton golfers could also play with USGA players, competing with them by cross-indexing handicaps.

"We know there will be resistance. A lot of old-line clubs will never allow Flogton play, and that's fine," Mr. McNealy said. But skiing traditionalists at first resisted snowboarding, he pointed out, "even though by now almost everybody acknowledges that snowboarding saved the industry."

How likely is Flogton to catch on? Not very, at least in its current out-of-the-box form. "If it were to work, it would be a conglomeration of a lot of ideas. It's not going to end up being exactly what Scott McNealy or anyone else thinks it's going to be right now," said Casey Alexander, a golf industry analyst for Gilford Securities who nevertheless supports the initiative, as a way to get people talking. Mr. McNealy characterizes Flogton as an "open source" enterprise and is counting on Web feedback, to help the game evolve.

One obvious response to the Flogton initiative is that most golfers already play non-USGA golf, some if not most of the time. What regular foursome doesn't invent a few of its own quirky rules to make things more interesting? All those scramble and Stableford formats used at outings and club tournaments are nonkosher. Who needs a new sanctioning organization to tell golfers how to have fun?

Another question is whether taking the technological limits off clubs and balls—a major part of the Flogton vision and a subject of keen interest to manufacturers—would actually help make golf more fun to play. The easiest, quickest improvement would be to the ball. Polara Golf will introduce an improved version of its nonconforming ball this spring that the company says will self-correct up to 90% of a slice or hook. That would seem to be every slicer's dream. But would it also deprive him of the deeper satisfaction, that comes from hitting the occasional perfect shot?

The AGA believes that technology could add 25% to the distance of an average golfer's drive and double the amount of backspin on wedge shots hit into greens. But if everybody has access to the same equipment, is the essential challenge of golf really any different than it was before, or the frustration of relative poor play any easier to abide? If alternative golf takes off, I guess we'll find out.

—Email John Paul at [email protected]
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I think they should probably leave it alone, if you want easier golf, practice more and take more lessons. I wish golf wasn't so damn costly, but the only way to protest cost is to not play, then they cut jobs and raise fees even higher to make up for the lost revenue. I'm hoping all this runs it's course and we can get back to some normalcy soon, but then again, this may be the new normal.
 
another big problem i feel with golf is the elitest attitude of the older members at golf clubs and the old fashioned way they run things. For instance i quite fancy joining a club close to me which i have played as a guest and enjoy playing. However to do so i must be proposed and then seconded then it goes in front of the committe and then i am on a probationary period. Now i dont know anyone at the course so how can i get a membership, thus i joined a newer course which was easier to join and now they have lost my money for good as i will stick to the new course. Its the older members that are set in their ways and dont like change and they dont want young golfers there and this will cause alot of courses to die out in the future.
 
Hmmmm. The entire premise of this seems off to me. Golf IS expensive as a hobby. It always has been. The R&D needed to create a new driver, ball, whatever can be incredibly prohibitive, and those costs are passed on to the first adopters. Can't afford a $399 driver? Wait 2 years and it will be $99. Is your game so perfect that using equipment from 2 years ago will make a large impact? Probably not.

I don't mind that golf is expensive. I like that it takes a strong moral compass to abide by the rules when I'm playing as a single. I like that the time and dedication I have put into the game has paid off after years of practice. Do I want more and more and more people playing this game I love? Sure I do, but I also want those people to respect the game and its heritage while aspiring to become proficient within the boundaries that have been set since my ancestral Scottish fathers were hitting a rock with a crooked stick.

Golf doesn't need a new set of wacky rules to increase its appeal. Discounted green fees for kids under 18 will take care of that alone. The rest of us can skip a triple whip mocha latte for a few days a month and get along just fine.
 
Definitely the cost of the game that drives people away.

And to second someone above, the Polara Golf bals do NOT work...I still can slice the heck out of them, LOL.
 
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