On The Seventh Day He Played

Twenty years ago, a morning on the golf course was a political statement. To the tune-in, drop-out generation, golf meant Bob Hope and his U.S.O. tours, neatly pressed clothes, graying hair trimmed high around the ears and cut well above the collar. Country-club golf was a symbol of everything the young held in contempt, a bastion, perhaps the last, of the back-slapping big business deal. Golf was something for Dad, but not for the new generation.

What a difference two decades make. Golf seems destined to be the game for the 1990s. Business, on and off the links, is booming. Some 23 million golfers last year teed off at 13,626 courses in the U.S. -- up 30% from 1985. They spent $15.6 billion on equipment, clothes, fees, lessons and resort travel, with the average duffer shelling out $675 each year. Industry analysts predict that annual sales will double by the end of the next decade. The sport supports no fewer than four major magazines: Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, Golf World and the phenomenally successful Golf Illustrated, whose circulation has increased from 35,000 to 400,000 since 1985. "Golf," says Jay Mottola, executive director of the Metropolitan Golf Association, "is the In thing now."

Retailers are scrambling to pluck some gold from the green. Sales from K mart's spruced-up golf line this year will top those for either tennis or exercise equipment. Wilson Sporting Goods' golf-clothing sales have more than doubled since 1985, to $11 million annually. In California off-course golf shops like the Roger Dunn franchise seem to be sprouting on every corner. Says Dennis Davenport, executive director of the Chicago District Golf Association: "Anyone in the industry who is not doing well is doing something wrong."

Such corporate giants as AT&T, Shearson Lehman Hutton and Toyota are catching a ride on the golf cart. Prizes offered by the corporate sponsors of Professional Golfers' Association tournaments are expected to top $63 million this year, up from $31 million four years ago. Says Gee Winands, advertising manager for Sunkist Growers, which annually earmarks about $200,000 for the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour: "We get brand-name exposure by sponsoring the 'Quiet Please' paddles. Every time they hold them up, well, you can't get that kind of exposure from regular advertising." Corporations love golf, says Susan Binford, a Los Angeles media consultant and former pro golf instructor. "It's such a clean sport. When was the last time you heard about a guy busted for drugs who was a P.G.A. member?" she asks.

No industry has worked harder at wooing golfers than the hotel and resort business. As astronaut Alan Shepard showed in 1971 with his six-iron shot on the moon, golfers will go to practically any extreme to try out a new course. According to the National Golf Foundation, players spent nearly $8 billion of their golf outlays last year on travel. Marriott Hotels and Resorts, based in Bethesda, Md., currently operates 18 golf getaways in the U.S., plans to open another in Hauppauge, N.Y., this fall and has three more on the drawing board. "If we don't have golf, we'd better have an ocean," says Marriott vice president Roger Maxwell. "If we don't have an ocean, we'd better have golf." Maxwell estimates that 95% of the hotel chain's group business comes from golfers.