R&A calls in Bale and Farah to save golf
Star names join campaign to attract younger participants Survey shows most people do not regard sport as ‘modern’
Its members infamously took 260 years to welcome women, but the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews is rapidly catching up with modern life this week.
Old Course traditionalists found themselves surrounded by screaming teens as word got out on Thursday that pop singer Harry Styles had shown up and teed off.
Now R&A executives are breaking even further from the club’s intransigent past by launching a diversity-focused drive to get millions more playing modern forms of the sport. “Golf is open to all,” said
Phil Anderton, the R&A’S chief development officer, of his co-ordinated plan to build on the boom in grass-roots involvement since Covid. Projects include an online pilot, the Golf.golf platform, which has searchable lists of driving ranges, simulators and municipal courses. There will also be videos fronted by famous faces such as Gareth Bale and Mo Farah.
Styles is not involved but his former One Direction bandmate Niall Horan fronts a TV programme in which he invites his celebrity friends to join him for a round. Over the coming weeks, expect them all to start waxing lyrical about the virtues of the sport to their tens of millions of social media followers.
In explaining why the project had been launched, Anderton expressed concern at research suggesting 92 per cent of the public did not see golf as a modern game. “The challenge is to attract and keep that older audience whilst simultaneously being attractive to the younger audience,” he said.
Programmes will be rolled out to the 200 national federations which, until now, have been receiving cheques but little help with practically growing the sport.
Anderton, a former chief executive of Scottish Rugby, Hearts FC and chairman of the ATP Tour World Finals, talks of taking inspiration from Coca-cola, another former employer, for having a clear global message. “You’ve got to be business-led if you wish to continue to maintain your position,” he said. “Historically at the R&A, we would take the money that we get from the Open and give grants to our affiliates around the world. ‘There’s a cheque for £50,000’.
“But it’s inefficient to have 200 countries create their own activation programmes. So what Coke does, and a lot of big global companies do, is create global assets that can then be taken by the individual countries and tailored to their local market. A good example of that would be Coca-cola and Christmas. That’s run everywhere around the world when they celebrate Christmas. So we thought, ‘Well, why don’t we do the same thing?’”
Effectively, Anderton’s rebranding of the sport will be a pitch to a younger audience that golf boosts health and well-being. If he is successful, it could mark a significant new chapter in the R&A’S guardianship of the game.
The R&A became the sole authority on rules in the UK in the late 1800s and manages the Open Championship, which is being held at Royal Liverpool in July. However, with it accepting its first female members only since 2014, Anderton admits some may be sceptical.
“I think there probably is a bit of surprise,” he said. “But if you’re going to make an omelette, you’ve got to smash a few eggs and I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews have been very supportive of the moves that we’re taking, because they’re passionate about golf, and they realise that these types of moves will ultimately help us deliver what we want, which is the sport thriving in 50 years’ time.”
The R&A is thought to be spending around £400,000 on projects so far, with the celebrities involved providing their services for free.
Anderton cites research suggesting some novices are put off by spending five hours playing 18 holes. Others are deterred by the perception they will have to pay for £60-an-hour tuition, he added. So, his programme will focus on ninehole formats, driving ranges and six-hole programmes for children.
However, he added: “Don’t leave with the impression that we’re trying to tell every golf club ‘you must move to this type of model’. I’m not trying to do that at all. Golf comes in many flavours and there will be golf clubs and golfers around the world who love nothing better than being part of a traditional golf club, suit jacket and tie with the rules. Good luck to them.”
While traditions are maintained in St Andrews, where the club was formed in 1754 by 22 “noblemen and gentlemen”, the R&A is innovating at another site it owns, the “Golf It” concept due to open in Glasgow. The vast indoor and outdoor attraction includes pitch and putt, adventure golf and a double decker floodlit driving range. Anderton said the target participants were younger adults who play other sports.
Critics may cry that the sport does not require such innovation. Research will be published by the R&A in the next fortnight showing the sport has maintained growth. But Anderton says golf is best placed to build from a position of strength, and denied any suggestion that his new programme was a response to the Saudi-funded LIV Golf making a garish play to appeal to a younger fan base.
“We’re not competing against all these bodies that are out there,” he said. “This is just us, as guardians of the game, doing what we can do beyond the very important traditional roles of governance and referees and technology. That’s what’s driving it.”