To be held in Korea this year, the Asian Amateur Championship will provide a global television platform. Picture by Paul Lakatos/AAC.
Seoul, South Korea: The South Korean Government has expressed its desire for golf to become more accessible and affordable.
In an article entitled
South Korea Woos Economy-Class Golf-Lovers in Image Makeover, the
Reuters news agency quoted a senior official as saying the time is right to bring golf into the sporting mainstream.
“Golf has become very popular among the public, while at the same time it has an elitist, extravagant image and is very expensive,”
Lee Hos-eung, the Finance Ministry’s Director-General for Economic Policy, told
Reuters.
“We feel it is right that we develop golf as a public sport, ease some of the consumers’ burden, expand the sport’s base and heighten the golf industry’s international competitiveness.”
The comments will be welcomed by the country’s golf officials who are preparing to host this year’s Asian Amateur Championship at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in Songdo, venue for last year’s Presidents’ Cup.
With its global television platform, that event will showcase Korea as a major power in world golf – and a potentially exciting golf tourism getaway.
Kang Hyung-mo, Vice President of the Korea Golf Association, said: “We are honoured and delighted to be given the opportunity to host the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship for the first time. Staging the championship will do wonders for the sport in our country and we look forward to seeing more youngsters taking up golf as a result.”
Despite the prohibitively high costs of playing a round in Korea, the
Reuters report said citizens of the country ‘lavish around US$13 billion annually on golf, or roughly US$260 per capita’.
It added that golf accounts for 38 per cent of participation sports revenue in South Korea.
But interest in the sport appears to be waning. After double-digit gains over most of the 2000s, visitors to the country’s 473 golf courses rose just 5.3 per cent last year, the slowest in three years, according to the Korea Leisure Industry Institute.
Meantime, screen golf lounges have boomed, with the number reaching more than 7,000 last year, according to the Korea Simulation Golf Culture Association.
The
Reuters report said ‘nearly half of the country’s 234 members-only golf clubs had burned through their capital by the end of 2014, according to government data’.
As a solution, the Government is now encouraging private clubs to turn public by lending them money at low rates to repay membership fees, and to lower the voting share needed to take a private club public from 100 per cent to 80 per cent.
To make the game more affordable for the less well-off, the Government has also advised course operators to relax rules requiring players to use golf carts and caddies.