GOLF IS FADING AWAY

Sport England recently announced their latest ‘once a week participation figures for each funded sport’.

Please note these figures from the Active People Survey (APS) are usually run on a twelve month rolling basis from October to October. As we are only part way through 2013, the APS7 figures represent a twelve month period from April’12 to April’13.

Here are the ‘once a week participation’ figures for Golf.

APS1 (Oct 05–Oct 06) – 889,100

APS2 (Oct 07-Oct 08) – 948,300

APS3 (Oct 08-Oct 09) – 897,600

APS4 (Oct 09–Oct 10) – 860,900

APS5 (Oct 10-Oct 11) – 833,200

APS6 (Oct 11-Oct 12) – 850,500

APS7 (Apr 12-Apr 13) – 772.800

From these figures you can deduce that 116,300 fewer people now play golf once a week in 2012/13 compared with 2005/06.

Instead of debating the length of the putter professional golfers should use in competition the R&A should turn their attention to the downward participation figures for golf in England.

Ian Woosnam also pitched in with 'Welsh golf is fading away'.

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