Popularity
In 2005, Golf Digest calculated that the countries with most golf courses per capita, starting with the best endowed were: Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Wales, United States, Sweden, and England (countries with fewer than 500,000 people were excluded). Apart from Sweden, all of these countries have English as the majority language, but the number of courses in new territories is increasing rapidly.
The most notable example of this phenomenon is China. The first golf course in the People's Republic of China opened in 1984, but by the end of 2009 there were roughly 600 in the country. Jack Nicklaus, who in late 2009 had either designed or had plans to design 35 courses in China, claimed in October of that year that China had plans to build 1,400 public courses in the next five years (currently, only a small number of China's courses are public), although a Chinese golf industry insider called Nicklaus' claim "bullshit". For the last several years, development of new golf courses has been officially banned, but the number of courses has nonetheless tripled since 2004; the "ban" has been easily evaded with the government's tacit approval simply by not mentioning golf in any development plans.
In the United States, the number of people who play golf 25 times or more per year decreased from 6.9 million in 2000 to 4.6 million in 2005, according to the National Golf Foundation. The NGF reported that the number who played golf at all decreased from 30 to 26 million over the same period.
