Is Golf DYING?

                Golf in recent years has become a favorite hobby of mine. Golf is a game were you’re never completely happy. You can have the best round of your life and still be upset by the two three putts you had for bogeys on holes seven, and hole nine. I’ve unfortunately only golfed consistently for the past two years when time permits, it has blossomed as a form of competition between my close group of friends and we’ve all generally just started to take the game seriously. It also is the best excuse to get outside and enjoyed being in nature, some of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in Minnesota happened to have been golf courses. Despite the recent interest in golf by my close group of friends and myself, the sport’s popularity is steadily declining.

                According to an article in the New York Times golf has lost around five million players in the last decade, with around twenty five million more to quit in the next few years due to age (baby boomers). Professionals have been endlessly trying to stop the decline by researching and experimenting with new rules, and different forms of the game. This is in a big attempt to attract the thirty and under crowd to get them reinvested in the sport.

                I’ve recently become very interested in this issue, mostly because I just discovered this problem early this summer. The New York Times article which link I’ll post below really delves more in depth about what attempts have been made to slow the decline and get youths back interested into the game again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/sports/golf/in-a-hole-golf-considers-digging-a-wider-one.html?_r=0

(The picture listed above is the sixteenth hole on Big Fish Golf Club in Hayward, WI.) 

I found this video of a very interesting golf product on YouTube earlier today, I found it to be a very intriguing product that caught my attention. The audience in this video is primarily golfers, this product was on display at the PGA merchandise show, you could say that there is a primary audience and a secondary audience in some sense, first off the primary audience would have to be golfers who play the sport more as a hobby and not as a career, the product is used mainly for improving your game with a golf mat that allows you to hit your clubs freely as well as using your own tees on the surface. This saves from ruining actual grass by swinging over and over again and destroying your own grass or a golf courses. I also believe the second audience is point toward career oriented golfers or golf pros, they may not be the main audience for this product but they may be the best way for owner of the golf mats Jay McGrath to earn a profit in bulk. The assumption of the author is that he believes that this is the best product for golfers to use as a hitting surface, to help improve the quality of the practice and in turn making the practice more successful. The way in which the author uses logos to appeal to the audience is by having his product on display on a highly respected golf show being the PGA golf show. As well as having a reporter asking about the product and having the backing of many professional golfers. He establishes ethos or credibility by citing references and showing all the professional golfers who use his product and back its quality. I trust the author because his knowledge seems great about his area of focus as well as the ability to invent similar products for different lies. His pathos appeals to the audience I believe by seeming like a knowledgeable and quality individual and an ordinary everyday guy. His purpose is to help deliver a quality practice product for golfers and golf lovers to use to improve their game, I believe it is explicitly stated throughout the video because he believes in his product. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srIS3zk918o