Drive past Rackham Golf Course on any given Saturday or Sunday, and it will be packed with high school kids. This is new. Once viewed as a sport that only our grandparents would play, golf is now hot, surging in popularity among teens.
It’s not just here in Berkley, the number of youth golfers across the country is soaring. According to the National Golf Foundation, since 2019, the number of on-course junior golfers has seen a net increase of 1 million participants, a 40% rise. There are a number of reasons for this. First, accessibility, around the country there is an increase in public courses, affordable tee times, and new venues like TopGolf. Second, and maybe the biggest reason for this increase, social media influence. For example, NBA star Steph Curry posts viral videos of himself making an impossible hole-in-one. Pro Golfer Bryson DeChambeau hits golf balls over the roof of his house, which is made up mostly of windows.
Berkley golfer Jonah Sterling has seen this change firsthand. He started golfing with his grandpa before he even started kindergarten, and now he’s projected to take the number one spot on varsity as a Sophomore. “I was a pretty unathletic kid. After COVID, I didn’t enjoy soccer as much, and I started to play golf, and it worked out great”. This new wave of golfers has completely changed the game for Sterling, he said, “I used to only golf with my grandpa, but now my friends can come golf with me, and it’s always a great time.”
Sophomore Cam Bancroft never thought he would hit a golf ball; he played soccer and basketball his whole life. But a few years ago, a friend’s older brother, Mathew Rucinski, took him to Rackham, and he was hooked. Soon after this, he was golfing a couple of times a week, and he joined the high school team. “I took [joining the team] as an opportunity to take golf more seriously and get some better competition,” Bancroft said. That one golf outing with Rucinski at his neighborhood public course opened up the world of golf to Bancroft.
Junior Logan Fishman is a weekend warrior on the golf course. He’s out there just for the fun of it. “I’m more of a casual golfer,” Fishman said, “I just started, I’m not that good.” But that doesn’t matter anymore, because with this new wave of golfers, there are players at all levels, on every course. Players like Fishman don’t have to be great to have a good time on the course. Fishman’s main sport is basketball, an intense sport; for Fishman, golf is a fun escape from the pressures of competitive play.
So there’s good news and bad news for the sport of golf. Thanks to social media and easier access, the game of golf is growing like never before, but if you’re a good golfer, you might get stuck behind a really slow group of novice players.
