5 Ways Golf Is Stuck In The Past (And How To Change Them)

There is a famous quote that goes something like, “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always 20 years behind the times.”

Right or wrong, I’ve often felt that way about golf. While other sports have, historically speaking, been quick to innovate and reinvent themselves, golf tends to be more resistant to change.

Thankfully, much of that has reversed in the past few years.

• Worn-out traditions like rigid dress codes are being replaced by a wider range of acceptable apparel and brands that are willing to push the boundaries of golf style.

• The concept of golf solely being 18 holes on a regulation course has been shredded by an influx of short courses and Topgolf-esque alternatives.

• Technology like simulators, AI coaches/caddies and more seamless club-fitting processes has enabled golfers to learn more about their games in an intriguing way.

• YouTube golf has emerged to give golf watchers an on-demand, commercial-optional medium to consume the game on their own time.

• Unbiased equipment testing (hey, that’s us!) is empowering golfers to make better gear decisions.

I’m a big proponent of this evolution. It has generally made golf a cooler, less formal game that is welcoming to anyone who wants to play it.

Having said that, golf isn’t perfect. There is still scar tissue from decades, if not centuries, of certain norms permeating the industry. And many of these norms still need to be altered—or discontinued entirely.

Here are five ways golf is still stuck in the past. For each one, I offer a solution on what should replace these norms.

1. The vast majority of golfers (in North America) use stroke play only

Most of golf throughout history has been stroke play. An individual keeps hitting their own ball until it’s in the hole.

While there is nothing wrong with stoke play, it’s also among the hardest, and often most boring, ways to play golf. The only reason we all do it is because that is what we are used to doing.

The typical 10-handicap like myself goes out and shoots 83 with a slew of bogeys or worse, a handful of pars and the occasional birdie. You are playing against the course and your baseline, but there is a certain monotony and relentless difficulty to it.

I think golfers are simply afraid to try new formats unless it’s an event where they are being told what to do.

Golf is supposed to be fun. I’m not saying stroke play isn’t fun but golfers should be mixing it up way more at this point. Too many of us are just afraid to take that leap.

Proposed solution

There are a million other formats for the game. You can play a round from the forward tees and try to break par. You can team up with another player (or players) for alternate shot, best ball, scramble or any number of team-based games.

And if you don’t want to team up, you can still play a game like Wolf or square off in six-hole individual matches during your round, even if nothing is on the line except bragging rights.

Normalize playing fun formats even if it’s not for a tournament or league.

2. Most golfers base what tees they play from off tradition

You pull up to a golf course you’ve never played and get the scorecard out as you roll up to the first tee.

“The blues are 6,400 yards and the whites are 5,900,” you say to your partner. “Yeah, let’s play the blues.”

You, and most of the tee sheet, that day are ending up at the blues for a few reasons, but the main one is conformity. Male golfers generally want to play where everyone else plays because that is tradition. Some of us don’t even check the scorecard beforehand.

What percentage of golfers hit the ball far enough to where 6,400 yards is an appropriate distance?

It’s a smaller number than we think.

The average male golfer drives the ball around 225 yards. Given that variable, most golfers should be playing from around 5,800-5,900 yards.

Keep in mind that 225 yards is only the average drive. So that means we have tons of golfers who are hitting it shorter than that. Many of them should be playing from the more forward tees.

This is a wild concept to me. Golf is a ridiculously hard game and people are voluntarily making it harder. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Proposed solution

Instead of giving golfers colors we are all familiar with (red, white, blue), courses should use unique tee box labels. At least that will slow down the people who roll up to the blue tees without a second thought.

But, more importantly, courses should start putting yardage and/or handicap ranges for each tee box to help golfers out. Print it on the scorecard or put a sign out on the first tee.

This gives golfers an “excuse” to move up a tee box without fear of judgment.

3. Some of the rules are holdovers that need to be rethought

The subject of golf rules have come up a lot here at MGS over the past couple of years. Some of you are still mad at me for saying that golfers don’t deserve free relief from fairway divots (I’m still right).

There are definitely rules in golf that haven’t been innovated at all. The reasons for some of them existing are simply because they have been in place for a long time.

For example, the simple act of hitting a ball out of bounds—which is common given how many courses are built around real estate—punishes players with a stroke and distance penalty that doesn’t match the crime.

This rule is a holdover from a time when OB wasn’t necessarily such a daunting hazard. Golf wasn’t meant to have 35-yard-wide corridors with houses on both sides of the fairway.

Sure, the average golfer will just go up and drop a ball near the OB stake and move along, but that’s because the actual rule is so punitive that no reasonable golfer (outside of competition) is going to follow it.

Golf rules have been modernized in the past 10 years but there are still some odd holdovers from the past that are just accepted as right because of tradition.

Proposed solution

Maybe we should all just follow John Barba’s common sense golf rules. Damn the rulebook!

But otherwise I hope the USGA continues to evaluate rules to come up with modern solutions that make more sense for the common recreational player.

4. Distinguishing between professional and amateur golf is still too complicated

This topic has come up a lot recently, and for good reason.

At this year’s U.S. Mid-Amateur, the nation’s most prestigious event for amateur golfers 25 years of age or older, six of the eight quarterfinalists had played professional golf and then become reinstated amateurs.

Each year when this happens we are invariably left with a heated discussion of how to draw a thicker line between professional golf and amateur golf. It seems inherently unfair that some 30-year-old former college golfer-turned-financial advisor—someone who has two kids and scrambles to play once per week—has to go up against a guy who won on the Korn Ferry Tour and had a cup of coffee in the big leagues.

If you’ve played golf for a living as your full-time job and maintained even a moderate level of success, your skillset is on a different planet compared to elite amateurs. Waiting a few years to get your amateur status back doesn’t take that advantage away.

And this conversation is not exclusive to elite amateur competition at the national level; we’re talking about situations like mini-tour players coming back to win club championships.

Until this decade, golf hung tightly to the sacredness of amateurs not being able to make money off their name, image and likeness. Now they can, which pushes some college-aged amateurs closer to the professional ranks before they actually turn pro.

Still, the lifelong nature of golf competition muddies the waters when professionals inevitably transform back into amateurs. It’s tough to make it as a pro golfer. These golfers shouldn’t be shunned from all competitive play for the rest of their lives just because they played the game at a high level and couldn’t stick in that realm.

Conversely, pros hopping back into the amateur game goes against the spirit of those competitions. There should be a place where lifelong amateurs can compete against one another.

Proposed solution

Currently, reinstated amateur status comes down to the USGA going off of precedent to give a waiting period—but this precedent is arbitrary. A golfer made X amount of money over X number of years, so they have to spend X amount of time before becoming amateur again.

I would make all of this less ambiguous.

For each year you play professional golf, you spend a year sitting out to get your amateur status back.

And for every $1 million earned, you add an additional year to your wait time.

If you have a 10-year pro career and made $5 million, you are not a competitive amateur for 15 years. You gave up that right. That’s what the money is for.

And if you played pro golf only for a brief time without making much money, you can be welcomed back to the amateur ranks in short order.

In the meantime, what is stopping ex-pros from making and playing in their own events where lifelong amateurs are not included? Lord knows there are enough of them at this point. Make your own national championship.

5. Pro golf broadcasts are still holding on to an old-school format

Golf broadcasts have seen some improvements over the past 10 years. That includes more shot tracers, leaderboard bugs staying on the screen and drone usage for better aerials.

I have no doubt golf coverage will continue to be innovated over the next 10 years and I do think there is a lot of runway to change things here.

Some of the low-hanging fruit is how golf structures its advertising. The ads are intrusive to the point where the product can be unwatchable. The fact there is a “Playing Through” version where the golf is still being shown on a fraction of the screen—as the ad takes up the rest of the space—doesn’t help.

I find it interesting that golf has yet to come up with solid solutions to this very obvious problem. It’s not a sport that has built-in breaks; golf is basically soccer where the action runs continuously.

On top of that, there are more frontiers to cross: creating better player-caddie audio, incorporating real-time analytics into each shot, producing better subscription products that show more golf shots and having announcers who go deeper than the typical platitudes.

Proposed solution

I’ve been shouting for more creative in-round advertising for years. It would be better for the sponsors because we would learn more about them and it would be better for the viewers because more golf shots would be shown.

The Tour’s TV contract will hold them back from doing this in the short-term but I think golf will eventually be forced to evolve in this realm because younger audiences loathe waiting through commercials.

That is my short list of ways golf is stuck in the past but I’m certain there are obvious ones I missed.

Comment below with your list.

Top Photo Caption: Golf’s dress code has been getting more informal in recent years. (GETTY IMAGES/Warren Little)