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YOUNG GUN: John Bradish, the young general manager for Springfield Golf & Country Club, overlooks the course.
YOUNG GUN: John Bradish, the young general manager for Springfield Golf & Country Club, overlooks the course.

Country clubs calling millennials back to golf

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Millennials aren’t interested in golf.

That’s according to a recent report by the National Golf Foundation. As income levels have fallen by as much as 10 percent for young professionals, compared with the early 1990s, millennials’ golf participation has dropped by much higher levels. Today, the report said young people ages 30-34 are 20 percent less likely to play golf and those ages 24-29 are 40 percent less likely to take up the sport.

John Bradish, the newly appointed general manager at Springfield Golf & Country Club, is part of that younger demographic. He said his peers have a shortage of time and income.

“Attention spans aren’t quite as long,” Bradish said. “It’s hard to get someone to (spend) four hours and play golf. That’s a big factor in it.

“People don’t have time to play 18 holes of golf.”

The 26-year-old Bradish transferred from the Kansas City area after working at Grand Summit Golf Course since he was a teen.

“I’ve been in the golf business, basically, my whole working career,” he said. “I started out washing golf carts and worked my way up.”

The new manager replaced retired Frank Kukal on Feb. 20, overseeing the private country club’s 18-hole course, driving range, athletic center, pools, tennis courts and restaurant. Adding head golf professional to the role, Bradish also teaches golf lessons about an hour a day. He has completed two out of three levels of the PGA Professional Golf Management Apprentice Program and has a business management degree from Avila University.

The average age of the club’s members is 55-60, Bradish said, with retired people frequenting the course during the week and young professionals unwinding there on the weekends. Springfield Golf & Country Club has grown to 400 from 350 active members this year, he said, out of the 500 maximum allowed by the owner, Fayetteville, Arkansas-based Lindsey Golf.

Bradish also enacted new practices to help connect with people closer to his age. Email blasts and social media posts are favored over printed flyers, and a youth golf camp launched this month for players ages 7-16. He also increased the prominence of tournaments on the course to engage more-competitive youths.

“I think golf is in a good place,” Bradish said. “There are some really good movements to try to get some younger people playing and introduce them to the game.”

For example, the PGA Junior League makes golf more of a social experience for children by placing them in teams.

“Golf is such an individual sport,” he said. “A lot of kids don’t grow up playing golf, because they want to play with their friends.”

Rick Neal, director of golf at Hickory Hills Country Club, told Springfield Business Journal in April that efforts have been made to grow the junior golf program at that course as well.

“You’ve got to promote and you’ve got to get them to stay around. If you don’t capture these young people by 7 or 8, you’ll lose them,” he said during the CEO Roundtable on golf. “They’re going to do something else. The soccer fields are full of those kids out there. There’s a battle with these other sports.”

In the Branson golf market, famed golfer Tiger Woods is partnering with Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris to open a family-friendly course at Big Cedar Resort in 2019. Payne’s Valley will be a short par-3 course designed with children in mind.

“It’s going to be something we think is really going to get a lot of people excited about golf,” Morris said at the April announcement event. “It’s going to be like putt-putt on steroids.”

Bradish also pointed to Topgolf, which operates a chain of interactive driving ranges emphasizing the social aspects of the sport. Players, stationed in climate-controlled tee boxes, hit microchip-embedded golf balls toward targets on the range. Their scores, based on accuracy and distance, are tallied on a competitive scoreboard. The entertainment complexes also include restaurant and drink service and event spaces.

Topgolf’s website states 53 percent of customers are between 18 and 34 years old, and 37 percent typically don’t golf. Last year, 10.5 million people visited Topgolf’s 33 venues, including one in Overland Park, Kansas, and hit 763 million golf balls.

Springfield Golf & Country Club, which opened in February 2001, has no initiation fee and monthly rates range from $50 to $220.



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