45 Golf emerged from the global pandemic with participation figures not seen in decades. Adam Lawrence asks whether this is translating into a boom for golf course architects. Hudson National in New York is one of many US clubs to invest in course infrastructure, with work in progress to build new greens and bunkers, regrass fairways and install a new irrigation system It seems very poor taste to note that a pandemic which has, up to now, killed seven million people and triggered the largest global economic crisis in more than a century, has been good for golf. But numbers don’t lie. In 2021, according to the National Golf Foundation, more rounds of golf were played in the United States than ever before, up by six per cent, even after a huge spike in the second half of 2020. In the UK, the number of people playing golf jumped from three million in 2019 to 5.2 million in 2020. Globally, the NGF estimates that the total number of golfers grew from 61 million to 66.6 million as a result of the pandemic. Photo: Tremont Sporting Co.
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