Callaway Supports Bifurcation

Very nice spot by reader Mark reading an Economist piece on Callaway CEO George Fellows, who apparently endorsed bifurcating the sport to save it.

Another obvious strategy, though a more controversial one, is to make golf more “consumer-friendly”—meaning easier. Golf's rulemakers have tended to focus on maintaining the integrity of the game for the best players, which has made life tough for the rest. Callaway has to conform to a welter of arcane specifications: there are regulations about how far from the centre of the club a ball can be hit and still go straight, for example. These are intended to stop Tiger Woods shooting 30 under par, but also make the game less fun for less gifted players. Golf needs to “bifurcate” into a professional sport and a game for the masses, says Mr Fellows. One opportunity is to think outside the old 18-hole, four-hour box. Callaway has recently invested in TopGolf, a business that turns a driving range into a sort of dart board, where players aim at targets and scores are calculated with the help of radio transmitters in the balls.

It's amazing that it took a major company this long to endorse the concept. But at this point, other than grooves, is there really much that could be done to make equipment so much more user friendly that it would encourage growth?

Perhaps if Mr. Fellows had noted bifurcation could lead to less expensive equipment thanks to less emphasis on spending ridiculous marketing millions to convince people that they can get the same benefits from technology as the PGA Tour's best, then he'd be onto something.