“Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” This facetious quote, most commonly attributed to Mark Twain, could be amended for our purposes as follows…

“Everyone complains about how difficult golf is, but no one does anything about it.”

We’re not talking about recent initiatives purported to make golf more “fun,” although following today’s advice certainly will help you accomplish that goal.

Getting your equipment properly fitted and taking lessons are two ways to guarantee not only a more enjoyable round, but lower scores. I said, “guarantee,” and I stand by that.

Whether you are just getting into golf or have been playing for years, buying clubs off the rack and heading for the first tee is a mistake, pure and simple. Just as not every man wears a size 40-regular suit and not every woman wears a size 8 dress, equipment specifications vary significantly based on your physical make-up—height, weight, age, gender, etc.  Your handicap and length of time playing the game will also be taken into account.

There are myriad options available in clubs and balls today, so finding the correct fit is not difficult. Many golf retail outlets and golf courses offer club fitting by PGA of Canada professionals. If you have a specific brand in mind, you can even go to their headquarters or fitting centre for a fitting. Or why not try out various brands at a demo day? (Details on manufacturers’ club fitting facilities and demo days are usually available on their web sites.)

A complete fitting will cover every club in your bag from driver to putter, and the fitter may even recommend a specific ball for your swing speed. A fitting costs a few dollars, but consider it money very well spent, an investment. It likely will save you a lot of money in the final analysis, preventing you from purchasing the wrong equipment. And having a custom fitting doesn’t necessarily mean you have to buy new clubs. After your fitting, you will receive a full report on your specifications that you can provide to any reputable equipment retailer once you decide which brand suits you best.

I have little sympathy for the golfer, beginner or experienced, who lays out hundreds of dollars for a new driver or a set of irons without being custom fitted and then moans that “I just can’t hit these.” Not only are they out a lot of money, but their “golf enjoyment quotient” (I just invented that) plummets with every successive round. Ergo, they play less because they are squirting shots in every direction.

With today’s sophisticated methods, a professional club fitter can often tweak your equipment to compensate for some fundamental swing flaws. But can you really “buy a better game”?

The definitive answer is … “kinda, maybe.”

A commitment to taking lessons from a PGA of Canada professional is the second essential element in our quest to be better golfers and, by logical extension, to have more fun playing the game.

“Both [properly fitted equipment and instruction] will help improve a player’s game and ultimately lower their handicap,” says Nick Yuen, former facility manager at TaylorMade’s Performance Lab at Glen Abbey, a par-5 from Golf Canada’s headquarters in Oakville, Ont. “You could debate which method is better but ultimately the deciding factors will be the player’s commitment to working with an instructor and practicing the necessary drills to change their swing mechanics.” (Yuen now is product and marketing manager for Adams Golf in Canada, a move made after TaylorMade purchased Adams in 2012.)

In what other pursuit in our lives would we not want the right equipment and instruction? Driving a car without those fundamentals would be disastrous, for example. Sky diving comes to mind, as well. Yet the majority of golfers ignore those two prerequisites for a better golf experience at the expense of not only fun, but significant cash, as well.

(Although “I just can’t hit these” doesn’t compare to “Is that a red light? Which pedal stops this thing?” or “Just how the heck do you open this parachute? My, that ground is getting close.”)

Before you buy that new driver or set of irons or even a putter, why not find out more about club fitting from a PGA of Canada professional or research the fitting opportunities offered by manufacturers? Once your existing equipment has been tweaked or you have purchased new custom-fitted clubs, head for the practice tee for a series of lessons.

Unlike the weather, your golf game is definitely something you can do something about. So do it.

You most likely don’t know Mikey and you may not have chosen autism as one of your charitable causes.

No worries. The chances are good that if you are a golfer, this column is about you.

A dozen or so years ago, good friends of mine had a son—Mikey— who had obvious developmental challenges. Despite the fact that both are physicians, it took agonizing months of frustration to reach a conclusive diagnosis that Mikey was autistic.  Not only were they understandably distraught by that diagnosis, they were stunned by the lack of resources and support for those on the autism spectrum. (At the time, I believe the reported incidence was something like one in 160. Today, it is one in 68.)

They decided something had to be done so other families in our immediate region wouldn’t have to go through that torturous process. So we sat down and planned the first Mikey’s Tournament for Autism in our small town in central Ontario. It started slowly, but quickly grew to the point where Mikey’s Place for Autism was established with a part-time staffer. Among other things, the small office helps connect those newly diagnosed with this disorder to find help and provide support on what will be a difficult lifelong journey. (You can find out more at www.mikeysplaceforautism.com.)

Thanks to the ongoing generosity of our community and to my friends in the golf industry, including Golf Canada, we have raised more than $300,000 in 10 years. Every single penny goes to the charity to support Mikey’s Place and its various functions.

The 11^th annual Mikey’s Tournament for Autism took place June 4. Coincidentally, just a day before the National Allied Golf Associations released the Economic Impact Study of Golf in Canada. While you can get all the details here, one finding was especially gratifying to me.

“In 2013, there were nearly 37,000 charitable events hosted at Canadian courses,” the report stated. “Using conservative estimates, these events raise more than $533 million for charitable causes across Canada.”

Half a billion dollars for charity by golf tournaments in this country in one year!

So while you likely don’t know Mikey and perhaps choose to support other charities, if you are a golfer you no doubt have supported a similar charity tournament.

While you rightly congratulate yourself for that unselfish act, ask yourself where charities like Mikey’s Place for Autism would be without golf.

The answer is obvious.

In a recent segment on Golf Channel’s Playing Lessons with the Pros, host Holly Sonders hesitated when her guest and matchplay opponent, PGA Tour star Matt Kuchar, asked her if his one-foot putt was good. She eventually nodded and he picked up his ball. “Ah, ladies’ matchplay rules…” snickered the noted jokester and trash talker.

But his slightly snide comment contained a kernel of relevance. The key to inviting more women to play golf is not to intimidate them with rules and regulations (although there is a definite need for a basic understanding of rules and etiquette, of course), and sometimes the more experienced women at a club or in a league do just that.

“When I started, some of the older ladies weren’t very welcoming,” recalls a friend of mine who now is a diehard golfer. “So I moved to another club where the atmosphere was totally different, like the difference between rep hockey and rec hockey,” said my friend, who has played both. “All I wanted was to exercise and socialize.”

Not coincidentally, at the club where my friend now plays, both the general manager and the director of golf are female. Keenly attuned to the priorities that make their ladies’ league so successful, they emphasize team events, where the focus is on enjoyment, not serious competition. They mix up the foursomes and provide a different themed dinner each week. “Exercise and socialize,” indeed.

Those grumpy Rule book-thumping ladies are not the sole reason more women don’t play the game, but they are a contributing factor, along with many others.

The deficiencies of design of many courses is a major offender. The forward tees are often an afterthought, poorly positioned to address the realities of shorter hitters who can’t navigate forced carries. These tee positions generally do not consider the distance women drive the ball or what club they hit on their approach. (I often wonder how many men would give up the game if they had to hit a fairway wood into every par-4 and counted themselves lucky if they hit a par-5 green in four shots, not three, as many women do.)

Many years ago, I was fortunate to interview Alice Dye who is married to famous course designer Pete Dye. Like her husband, Alice is an accomplished player and a renowned designer and was, in fact, the first woman president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.  Today, she has not changed her mantra from what she told me back then.  Golf courses should have two sets of tees for women; one at about 4,600 yards for average players and another about 5,600 for above-average. You can read the details here.

It’s not that women don’t want to play golf, or more golf. It’s that they don’t feel welcome, sometimes by their peers, or men, or even course design. And that is regrettable, because those of us fortunate to play and enjoy the game realize the object of the exercise is to have fun.

Combining that fun with a great cause is what is behind the Subaru Golf Fore the Cure. Golf Fore the Cure was created by Golf Canada to drive women’s participation in the game of golf with the use of fun, non-intimidating activities. Through a unique partnership structure with the Canadian Cancer Society (and Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation), the program has women across the country participating in golf activities and raising money and awareness for the fight against breast cancer. (Please go to www.golfcanada.ca/golfforethecure to find out how you can get involved in this inspiring program.)

Ideally, the best way to get more women into golf is to introduce them to the game at an early age. Junior camps and clinics are great, but an impressive initiative has been started in Brampton, Ont., where Jeff Overholt and Jon Roy of Golf Performance Coaches have partnered with the Brampton Golf Club to launch the first and only Junior Golf Development Centre in Canada designed specifically for girls.

“The objective is to create an opportunity to encourage young girls to participate in golf while developing confidence and respect in a safe and supportive environment,” says the release announcing the program.  “It will also provide a coaching pathway for girls who are interested in playing competitive golf.”

The program, a joint effort between Golf Performance Coaches and Brampton Golf Club, is in conjunction with the governing bodies for golf in Canada. It is supported by Golf Canada, and run by PGA of Canada members.

For those not-so-young beginning female golfers, we may want to take a page (or pages, literally) from our neighbours to the south.

The National Women’s Golf Alliance is encouraging courses to become “NWGA certified” under its “Rolling Out The Green Carpet” program which uses as its major resource a PGA of America publication called the Connecting With Her Playbook, which explains why golf clubs should appeal more to women and offers advice on how to do it. (You can view the Playbook here.)

Obviously, there is no lack of resources to welcome more women of all ages into golf.

The question is: Do we—women, men and the industry in general—have the will?

Agonizing yet again over getting your mom or wife the perfect Mother’s Day present?

Fret no more. Consider me your personal shopper with the perfect suggestion!

Give her what she really wants: Her family, all wrapped up in the game of golf.

And I don’t mean entertaining her for a couple of hours this Sunday at the predictable Mother’s Day brunch at your club—golf’s equivalent of that cheesy mass-produced card you picked up at the last minute at Shopper’s Drug Mart. (Shame on you.)

What does every mother want? More time with her family, of course, and there are few better opportunities to share family time than through golf.

Indisputably, our world has changed. Rare is the family who gathers each evening around the dining room table to share a meal as well as their respective experiences that day. Rarer still are those families who spend an evening hovering around a board game, playing cards or interacting in other ways. More likely, after a hasty dinner, the family members splinter off in different directions, most likely to individual isolation with their electronic entertainment device of choice.

What if one evening or afternoon each week was a family golf outing? The onus is on golf clubs to promote this opportunity, not only to strengthen the family unit but also, with a nod to today’s financial realities, as a potential membership boost. As one example, ClubLink now offers a complimentary family twilight membership to the spouse and children under 16 of members of its Prestige- and Platinum-level clubs. Family nights with free instruction, complimentary loaner clubs, nine (or fewer, if desired) holes of golf, special menus and other activities are scheduled weekly.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I recently left my post as ClubLink’s director of communications. Nevertheless, I continue to endorse this initiative for other clubs as well. There are other such initiatives out there, but not enough. Truth is, there will never be enough.  Having said that, if your club has a great and proven method of attracting families, I would appreciate hearing about it for inclusion in a future column. Email me at gordongolf@outlook.com.)

Let’s bid good riddance to the days when the husband and father opens his annual dues letter from his male-dominated golf club and announces to his wife: “Hey, honey, guess how much more it’s going to cost us this year for me to spend more time away from you and the kids? Where’s our cheque book?”

On the bookshelf in my office is a framed cover of the Sept. 3, 1960, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. The Norman Rockwell illustration depicts a tubby, cigar-smoking husband in a pork-pie hat and golf attire entering the kitchen door, golf clubs in hand. His facial expression is dumbstruck as he stares at his apron-clad wife. For there, leaning against the wall, is a new set of golf clubs and golf shoes—for her! She is putting a ball across the linoleum floor into a water glass.

Apparently, the message conveyed by that magazine 54 years ago was that America’s newly emancipated women were about to invade golf courses, previously the exclusive domain of men.  And yet I see illustrations from the late 1800s and early 1900s showing men and women playing together in the same foursome. In fact, the very first golf event at venerable Shinnecock Hills on New York’s Long Island was organized by its women members in 1891. Women have a long and revered and well-deserved place on the golf course and we shouldn’t need a magazine cover or some golf columnist to remind us.

So smarten up. Give your mom or wife and, by natural extension, your family and you a great and lasting gift this Mother’s Day. Make the commitment to golf as a family. It will be, as the saying goes, the gift that keeps on giving.

As the proud patriarch of a golfing family, I am well positioned to tell you that. Here’s one story that is apropos, I believe.

Thirteen years ago, almost exactly to the day of this Mother’s Day, my 70-year-old mother-in-law, Shirley Ironstone, aced the seventh hole at Midland Golf and Country Club. It was her first and only hole in one. What a celebration we had! As we all gathered at the family cottage, three golfing generations toasted her achievement. Surrounded by family, Shirley was in her glory. A certificate announcing her feat adorned her house until she passed on. It now hangs in our home. She may be no longer with us, but that memory and many others shared on the course and in the clubhouse are still vivid among those of us who loved her.

Flowers fade, cards are recycled, appetites return unabated after even the most lavish brunch.  This year, give that most beloved woman in your life the gift of family, the gift of golf, and lifelong memories.

About John Gordon

It’s been said that John Gordon has “done it all” in Canadian golf since he first got involved in 1985 as managing editor of SCOREGolf.

Based on his resume, it’s a statement that’s hard to dispute. He left SCOREGolf to become Golf Canada’s director of communications and member services and was the founding editor of Golf Canada magazine.

In 1994, he turned to golf writing fulltime, authoring eight books, penning a regular column for the Toronto Sun and then the National Post, and writing innumerable articles for golf consumer and trade publications. He was the on-air and online golf analyst for Rogers Sportsnet for eight years before joining ClubLink, one of the world’s largest multi-course owners and operators, to build their communications department, re-launch their magazine and build out their websites.

In 2014, John returned to golf writing fulltime and will contribute regularly to golfcanada.ca. You can follow him on Twitter at @gordongolf.

The headline on the press release reads: “Golf boom in jeopardy?”

“The continued growth and health of golf in Canada depends on getting more young people into the game,” states the first paragraph of the release, “but a lack of focus in the golf industry threatens its future, the first Canadian Golf Summit was told Thursday.”

The date? Dec. 8, 1989.

Twenty-five years ago, as managing editor of SCOREGolf magazine, I organized and chaired the first and, to date, only Canadian Golf Summit. That event, open to the public, brought together the heads of all the national golf associations and other involved parties not only to explain their roles in the context of the game, but to participate in panel discussions on topics such as The Next Generation of Canadian Golfers, Development of Facilities and Funding, Teaching and Coaching, and Research.  It was a stellar cast featuring people who, both as individuals and as representatives of the game in Canada, had a vested interest in its future.

I was motivated to dig out my files on that Summit recently in the wake of alarmist announcements from the media and the “industry” about the perceived imminent demise of golf. I didn’t quite dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back for my foresight and vision way back in 1989, but I think I might have strained something.

Then I read The Kingdom of Golf in America by Richard Moss and The Future of Golf in America by Geoff Shackelford.

The former is a guide to the historic ebb and flow of the game in the U.S. by an academic who is an avid golfer. The latter is a compilation of essays by one of today’s most insightful and opinionated writers. Both tell us loud and clear that people who care about the game have shepherded it through tough times—not just for a mere 25 years, but for centuries.

Distilling the essence of both books and other related research was a humbling experience, although I had been given the head’s up just after I joined SCOREGolf back in 1985. Tom McBroom, for years now one of Canada’s most notable architects, took a couple of hours to explain the facts of golf life to this rookie. At that time we were, he pointed out, in the midst of the third golf boom of the 20^th Century. The first occurred during the 1920s, often called golf’s Golden Age, and the next in the affluent 1960s. Despite the undeniable fact that both those waves had crested and troughed, it seemed that just about everyone believed this latest one would last forever. Not bloody likely.

Golf, like the people who play it, is a living, breathing thing. Like us, its existence is typified by cycles. We are in a down cycle now and for how long is anyone’s guess. But that uncertainty is unacceptable in these fast-food times when immediate gratification is not just expected, but demanded.

Fear-mongering and nay-saying are fashionable. After hearing such dire comments emanating from the PGA Show in Orlando in January, my 27-year-old son called me. He and his fiancée play two or three times a week on an executive course with their friends.  “Wanted to let you know we are giving up golf, Dad,” he said. “We just heard it isn’t fun or cool anymore.” (He was kidding, of course, having inherited his father’s dubious sense of humour.)

My son, like many kids, played golf when he was young, then migrated away from it when university and then getting a job became priorities. Now he is back in the fold and, I hope, will stay. He got into the game because my wife and I played and we played because my wife’s parents gave us each a half-set of clubs. Off we would go, the four of us, to the local nine-holer where the scores were secondary to the experience.

In his book, Moss makes a great deal of the value of “community” to the vitality of the game. When I read those passages, I smiled, remembering those nine-hole rounds with my in-laws and, later, when I played with my son and his grandfather. Who won? Don’t recall. Don’t care. In the final analysis, we all did.

That is golf. It will always be golf, despite these recent dire predictions which, history teaches us, are just updated regurgitations of what has been said during golf’s many past and, it must be emphasized again, temporary declines.

“We have seen the enemy and he is us,” a comic-strip character said a long time ago. We, all of us, are to blame for some of the blemishes on today’s game—slow play, courses that are too difficult and too expensive—but these are not life-threatening. They can be remedied with care and attention. They do not demand radical surgery.

If you love the game, you will take personal responsibility for it. Protect it. Adopt common-sense initiatives like Tee It Forward and While We’re Young. Support CN Future Links, Golf in Schools and the Golf Canada Foundation. Create the sense of community Moss speaks of by inviting a kid or your spouse or a friend to play with you.

And have faith in the game and its future. That faith will eventually be justified—yet again.

About John Gordon

It’s been said that John Gordon has “done it all” in Canadian golf since he first got involved in 1985 as managing editor of SCOREGolf.

Based on his resume, it’s a statement that’s hard to dispute. He left SCOREGolf to become Golf Canada’s director of communications and member services and was the founding editor of Golf Canada magazine.

In 1994, he turned to golf writing fulltime, authoring eight books, penning a regular column for the Toronto Sun and then the National Post, and writing innumerable articles for golf consumer and trade publications. He was the on-air and online golf analyst for Rogers Sportsnet for eight years before joining ClubLink, one of the world’s largest multi-course owners and operators, to build their communications department, re-launch their magazine and build out their websites.

In 2014, John returned to golf writing fulltime and will contribute regularly to golfcanada.ca. You can follow him on Twitter at @gordongolf.