[For Part 1 of "A New Decade of Long Island Golf," covering some of the main themes of local golf in the 2010s and looking ahead to the 2020s, click here.]
John Borkes opens his back door to a sweeping waterfront view near Freeport's Nautical Mile, and when he plays golf, he's typically right nearby, looking out over the surf from The Golf Club at Middle Bay.
"I'd love to go around playing different courses, but ultimately I wind up at Middle Bay because it's close to home," Borkes says. "It's a nice course and it's convenient -- usually I don't have time to go farther and play 18."
Five times a week, Jeff Byer commutes from home in Brooklyn to work in Massapequa Park, and he often adds a sixth trip on the Belt Parkway for 18 holes on the Island. Ask him and he'll tell you his home course is Bethpage Red, but when time is tight and he can't take another tussle with the Belt, Byer will stay inside the borough at Marine Park.
"I want time to warm up, get loose, hit some irons. Go to the practice green and get a feel for my putter," Byer says. "It's part of the full experience."
While their golf priorities vary, Borkes and Byer have one important thing in common -- they both recently celebrated 30th birthdays, putting them comfortably within the confines of the oft-discussed millennial generation, a group of young adults that will have plenty to say about where Long Island golf stands when the 2020s melt away into 2030.
This past summer, Newsday announced the results of an expansive "nextLI" survey that found two-thirds of Long Island's young adults expect to move off the Island within the next five years, citing the region's high cost of living. New York State as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, lost more than 75,000 residents from July 2018 to July 2019, the largest population decline of any state in that time period.
And last month, a study by the Nassau County comptroller's office revealed that the number of Long Island residents between the ages of 20 and 44 has dropped by nearly 10 percent since 2000.
"The Baby Boomers are aging out, and that leaves the millennial generation to pick up the slack and replace rounds," says one Suffolk-based course manager. "If even half of that 67 percent [in the Newsday report] moves away, public golf courses and private clubs will be in a bad place."
According to the National Golf Foundation, which tracks participation, golfers age 65 and over played an average of 36 rounds in 2018. Millennials between age 18 and 34, however, played just 11.6 rounds, "a likely byproduct," per NGF, "of increased demands on their time and involvement with a variety of other activities."
"INCREASED DEMANDS ON THEIR TIME"
Time commitment has emerged as perhaps the biggest barrier preventing new players from dipping their toes into the sport and many existing ones from maintaining their preferred frequency of play. Six-hour blocks of free time -- long the bedrock of a casual, golf-heavy lifestyle -- have given way to shorter, fragmented spurts of activity scattered around non-traditional work schedules, kids' activities and a host of other family obligations.
"Time is pretty much everyone's main factor, with work and family playing a big part," says Scott Fowler, 37, who plays most of his golf at public courses in western Suffolk. "If I have to, I'll go out and pay for a round knowing I can only get 12 or 13 holes in."
It's part of the reason modernized nine-hole courses are in vogue nationally, and on a local level as well. Long Island's only newly built course of the 2010s was the Nickerson Dunes Pitch & Putt, which earned a little bit of golf press with its uncommon design. Two longtime nine-holers at Sandy Pond and Cedars were rejuvenated last decade by extensive repairs and renovations. Around the country, refurbished courses like the Winter Park muni in Florida and Sweetens Cove in rural Tennessee are hits that draw golfers from states away.
Meanwhile, Jack Nicklaus is on record in support of 12-hole rounds. And the USGA's ongoing "Play 9" campaign centers on the "time-friendly, unwind-friendly" nature of the nine-hole round. In one Play 9 promo, a bearded, denim-jacketed man on the go -- the unofficial mascot of the millennial crowd -- looks at his watch as the narrator ponders, "Golf and life...how do you fit one into the other?"
The issue is certainly not a new one. ("The situation is getting worse instead of better, and there seems to be no solution," reads one 1951 Newsday column on slow play.) In 2011, longtime Newsday golf writer Mark Herrmann covered the sport's time constraints and its possible remedies. "Golf is expensive and it takes a lot of time," said Steve Smith, then the executive director of the Long Island Golf Association. "There are reasons why young people don't take up the game and why people stop playing."
"It takes too much time to play golf," former Bethpage pro Joe Rehor told Newsday. "I see it with my son-in-law. He's got two kids at home and he can't play golf. He's got [youth] lacrosse, he's got concerts, he's got this and that. He's got no time for golf. If you want to introduce new players to the game, you can't make it so time-consuming."
Fast-forward nine years and time-friendliness has taken on greater urgency, as course closings continue to heavily outpace openings, and the massive boom of mobile technology has shortened attention spans and conditioned people, especially younger ones, to streamline more of their daily routine, including time spent on recreation. Rapid growth of technology has already changed the way people search for rounds of golf via GolfNow and other tee-time apps. It's likely just a matter of time before technology changes the way people view the act of playing golf itself. Once you've grown accustomed to having any conceivable task no farther away than your fingertips, pacing around for 15 minutes on a backed-up par-3 in the middle of a five-hour round feels even more like time poorly spent.
"While time has always been a consideration with golf, I think it makes the game less appetizing to potential players as our society evolves," says Jon Sherman, creator of Practical Golf, a Long Island-based game-improvement website and newsletter. "How much time are golfers willing to endure?"
Much of the resistance to outside-the-box solutions revolves around the sport's traditions. Ideas like 12-hole rounds are dismissed by some as gimmicks destined to fail; others consider them too radical for a local public course to explore on its own without proof of success.
"It's hard to be the first to experiment with something new, there's so much uncertainty," says Andrew Wilson, Bethpage's director of agronomy. "If statistics say most people want to play 18, is it worth focusing on six holes or nine holes?"
Ryan Stewart, 31, is at peace with the length of play and willing to endure the five-hour-plus round if it means getting in a full 18. "Anything less than 18 holes is just not enough for me. The only time I play less than 18 is after work when I run out of daylight," says Stewart, who admits the recent arrival of twins might alter his perception of golf's time crunch.
"I don’t see additions of 12- or six-hole rounds fixing the time problem on the 18-hole courses," he adds. "We have plenty of nine-hole courses around here but I rarely ever see a wait."
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So with time at a premium, priorities shifting away from half-days at the course and the pool of prospective players shrinking locally, it would seem imperative that Long Island's public golf courses stake their claim to what remains of young adults' time and attention, and fight to turn them from hesitant prospective golfers to potential lifelong players and customers. Perhaps come up with mutually beneficial ways to get them into the clubhouse, onto the course and headed home in two or three hours rather than five or six. Especially now, when businesses can brainstorm fresh ideas at little to no cost and deliver them right where young adults spend much of their time -- on their phones, perusing social media.
But while Long Island restaurants, farm stands, coffee shops, breweries and breakfast joints have figured out ways to build and captivate audiences -- in some cases thousands of followers deep -- with eye-catching photos and video clips, Long Island golf courses have largely sat hidden away in self-imposed online anonymity.
Check back next week for Part 3 of "A New Decade of Long Island Golf," which will address local golf's marketing and self-promotion in the social-media era.
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