Grow the game.
Those words have been a mantra for much of golf during the past few decades, as well as a goal for people and institutions throughout the sport. The idea, of course, is to induce more individuals to tee it up, whether as rank beginners or returnees to a game they gave up long ago. And the push to do that has acquired an added sense of urgency post-COVID, as golf looks to get as many of the estimated 6.2 million newbies who flocked to the sport during the pandemic to keep playing now that mask mandates and lockdowns are mostly things of the past.
The big question, of course, is: how best to make that happen?
One of the more interesting and effective approaches is being taken by the Southern California Golf Association, which is the largest regional golf organization in the country. It comes in the form of an affiliate golf program that encourages people to organize clubs that do not have courses of their own but nonetheless play matches and stage events at facilities throughout the area. And the initiative is pr...