Richard Bath: 'There has been a worrying malaise in our national game'

Published on Friday 30 July 2010 13:08

At the risk of coming over all American, have some golf stats. At Royal Birkdale this week, 28 Korean women started the Ricoh British Women's Open, with 20 making the cut.

Scotland had five representatives in the field on Thursday; by yesterday that number was down to one. That lone Scot, Janice Moodie, started 12 off the lead and bogeyed the first hole. At the start of play yesterday nine of the 22 players who were at par or better - basically the only players with a chance of winning the tournament - were Koreans.

Now consider this. At the time Se Ri Pak became the first Korean to win a major when she won the US Women's Open in 1998, there were just three Koreans with an LPGA tour card. By 2002 that number had risen to 11, by 2003 it had become 18. In 2008 the number grew to 45 players on the LPGA tour, with Sweden the country with the next biggest representation at 14. The world No.1 is a Korean, Shin Jiyai, who won the French Masters at Evian last week and the British Open the year before last. Korean ex-pats are also a big factor in both men's and women's golf across the Pond: Michelle Wie, Christina Kim and Anthony Kim are just three of a whole bevy of young Americans to possess two Korean parents.

In the men's game, the Koreans' charge may not be quite so all-conquering, but it soon will be. St Andrews was a taste of things to come, with eight Koreans in the line-up compared to just six Scots. That trend is only going one way with the a whole host of teenaged Koreans dominating the amateur and youth titles. Nineteen-year-old Noh Seung-yul leads the Asian Tour's Order of Merit, while the two most prestigious Amateur championships, the British and American, are held respectively by 20-year-old Jin Jeong and 18-year-old An Byeong-hun. Jeong was also the top-placed amateur at St Andrews.

They are scary figures, but they also provide a beacon of hope. Korea may have a population ten times as big as Scotland's, but golf is not a pursuit that is open to the majority of young Koreans. With the average round at a Korean golf club costing 150, it is a game that is out of the reach of the vast majority of their young. Besides, the Koreans only have 200 golf courses in the whole country compared to almost 600 in Scotland. The prices in Scotland mean that the game is accessible to most kids: the annual membership of my local municipal golf course, Routenburn in Largs, where Bob Torrance was for years the pro, comes in at 73 for a junior; a round costs 9.

There is no doubt that there has been a worrying malaise in our national game. Where once it was impossible to get into many clubs, these days there are very few clubs with waiting lists.The last Scottish man to win a major was Paul Lawrie in 1999; the last Ryder Cup team was the first not to feature a Scot. There is every chance we will suffer the embarrassment of a Scot-free European team when the Ryder Cup comes to Gleneagles in 2014.

Changing that malaise will take time, and it may not even be possible. There is no doubt that the Korean success is partly down to cultural factors, with Korean parents seeing it as irresponsible not to make the most of any talent that shows itself and guiding their youngsters in a way we would deem unacceptable. As Se Ri Pak says: "Koreans have very strong families, and support is the most important thing. What you see as pushy parents, Koreans see as support."

But there is also another dynamic at play. For years we have taken our pre-eminence in world golf for granted, as if being the Home of Golf will automatically ensure competitiveness at the top level. As the English found with Wimbledon, it's an arrogance that eventually becomes self-defeating. Fortunately, an unlikely hero has launched a programme which is changing attitudes and could eventually give Scotland the impetus to achieve some of the success that the Koreans have attained.

Former First Minister Jack McConnell is unlikely to enjoy a sparkling political legacy, but the keen club golfer has at least ensured that Scotland's national game is on the road to recovery. Back in 2003, when Gleneagles won the right to stage the 2014 Ryder Cup, it was McConnell who underwrote the "legacy" pre-requisite of the bid, devoting 500,000 a year to a programme called ClubGolf, which aims to get every Primary Five schoolchild playing golf by 2014.

This summer, there were 300 schools involved, plus every local authority and golf clubs up and down the country. Specific schemes, such as the girls-only classes run in Sweden, have been imported where appropriate. Over 12,000 kids are now club members and six 14 and 15-year-old golfers who started on the scheme in 2004 graduated to Golfing Academies this year. Clubgolf say that they reached 40,000 of the 50,000 P5 kids in Scotland this year, and while that's almost certainly an exaggeration, I know from my own village and from my kids' experience that the scheme has been rolled out widely.

If even our traditionally stuffy and unwelcoming golf clubs are changing their ways (and many have changed their rules so that children as young as nine can join), and a growing number of PGA coaches are getting involved, then perhaps we can emulate the Korean example. For once truly effective grass-roots change in Scottish sport is on the agenda and for that, Jack McConnell, we salute you!