Turns out golf's international growth spurt has been even bigger than the industry had thought.
Early returns from an ambitious, three-year project by the National Golf Foundation to identify and verify every golf course in the world indicate that there are more golf courses outside of the United States than previously thought.
It had been widely estimated that there were about as many golf courses outside of the U.S. than inside, around 16,000. But based on research done in year one of the NGF's project, it appears the number of courses outside the U.S. may be closer to 17,500. The project has also identified 189 countries with at least one golf course, and has noted more than 300 golf course construction projects outside of the United States. For some countries, that means there are more golf courses currently under construction than are open and in operation. That's a far cry from the state of affairs domestically, where course closures have outpaced new course openings for the past five years.
The early information from this study was reported in this week's edition of Dashboard, a weekly e-newsletter distributed by the NGF. For more information, visit the NGF website.
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