Golf takes its shot on a continent where soccer
rules
By STEPHEN WADE / AP Sports Writer
SOTOGRANDE, Spain (AP) -- Europe is going through a golf boom.
But it's muffled in many corners of the continent and hardly heard
in others as the game tries to shake its elitist image.
The Ryder Cup beginning Friday in Spain -- for the first time
being played outside the United States or Britain -- drives home
the point.
This is golf's most prestigious event, drawing 30,000 well-heeled
fans daily with 1,500 arriving and lodging on the QE2 in the nearby
Mediterranean port of Algeciras. The famous liner is reported
to be carrying half the world's stock of Beluga caviar.
One group of Americans has rented an 24-room castle. Another
paid $35,000 for a week in an eight-bathroom villa on the grounds
of the Valderrama club, widely regarded as Europe's best course.
The worldwide television audience will be 700 million.
But the event -- pitting the top 12 European players against
the top 12 from the United States -- is being virtually ignored
in Spain. As in much of the rest of Europe, it's a minority sport
seen as elitist, quintessentially British and dwarfed by the continent's
sports monolith -- soccer.
"I cannot understand the attitude of the Spanish press,"
said European team captain Seve Ballesteros, the Spaniard who
attracted Europeans to the game in the 1970s and 80s by regularly
thumping the Americans.
"They seem to think nothing exists outside soccer. I kept
thinking that they would get more interested," Ballesteros
added. "But it's still soccer, soccer, soccer."
Golf on the continent has swollen to 2.76 million players,
double the number of 12 years ago. But the expansion has been
spotty and most clubs are still private.
The PGA European Tour, begun in the early 70s and modeled after
the U.S. Tour, helped popularize the game. It landed sponsors
and television time and marketed marquee stars like Ballesteros
and German Bernhard Langer. Those two have hit middle age and
the European tour is also in mid-life crisis without a personality
to sell like American prodigy Tiger Woods.
Europe's biggest star, Colin Montgomerie, will probably play
full-time next season in the United States because the courses
and competition are better. Others will follow if he goes.
Sweden has been the on-going success story. But French expansion
has stagnated after a decade of over-building. And in Spain, Portugal
and Italy most of the courses were built to attract foreign vacationers.
In southern Spain, for instance, 40 courses lie within an hour's
drive of Valderrama. The green patches across Spain's arid south
are targeted at the 100,000 British expatriates who live along
the Costa del Sol, and Germans and Swedes who've caught the golf
bug and winter in these parts.
Space, always a concern in Europe, has also been an obstacle
to growth, particularly in small, crowded countries like Switzerland,
Austria and Belgium. Environmental activists have been strident
at times in Germany. And so have farmers.
"We have grown in the last 10 or 15 years, but it should
have been more," said Swede John Storjohann, the general
secretary of the Swiss-based European Golf Association.
"The game is still seen as being too elitist here, which
is still our main obstacle," Storjohann added. "In the
United States and Scotland and -- to some extend England -- it's
not that way."
European golf is still dwarfed by the United States with 25
million players.
England has by far the most registered players in Europe (827,129)
followed by Sweden (373,430), Germany (272,830), France (253,800)
and Scotland (222,000). Spain is No. 7 on the list with 108,204
and Italy No. 12 with only 46,866. The 12 European Ryder Cup players
represent nine countries, but only five of those are outside Britain.
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, a haughty-sounding body based
in St. Andrews, Scotland, oversees the rules of the game and is
widely regarded as the home of golf.
The Royal and Ancient recognizes a responsibility to spread
the game, change the image, and attract young players. It recently
gave an $80,000 grant to start a driving range in Portugal. And
it granted free admission to youngsters at July's British Open.
"The attitude (that golf's elitist) can only be got rid
of slowly, it can't be done overnight," said Royal and Ancient
secretary Michael Bonallack.
"Any growth has to be sustained and controlled. You've
got to make sure you don't build too many courses at one time,
which unfortunately has happened."
In Sweden, golf has taken root as a family game. The world's
top woman is perhaps Sweden's Annika Sorenstam and the American
and European professional tours are filled with Swedes, including
European Ryder Cup members Jesper Parnevik and Per-Ulrik Johansson.
"Before in Sweden, golf was kind of a rich man's sport,"
said Pierre Fulke, one of 20 Swedes on the European tour. "But
people realized it wasn't as expensive as they thought it would
be."
"Now anyone can go play," he added. "Young kids
are really welcomed and encouraged to practice with the local
pro."
"Golf in Sweden got a boost 25 or 30 years ago when courses
were built in small towns for business executives who'd been sent
there to manage industries moved from the cities," said Storjohann
of the European Golf Association.
The same idea is pushing golf into central Europe -- particularly
the Czech Republic and Slovenia -- where courses are built to
attract foreign business executives, Storjohann added.
"In a lot of political circles you are starting to see
golf played, and it doesn't seem to matter if you're a rightist
or a leftist," Storjohann said. "Despite the elite image,
politicians must see it as a way to get closer to the people."
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