They're experimenting with new forms of golf, including one with a fifteen-inch hole. This is to stem the tide of golfers giving up the game. But this tide is probably just demographics: Baby Boomers caused the game to grow in popularity in the eighties, but now they're at retirement age and starting to hang up the clubs.
I don't think the big "pizza-sized" holes are going to help. I'm no expert on golf, but I was under the impression that the sport is balanced between driving and putting, with the player forced to be competent at both, but allowing a player to succeed if they excel at either. Having a giant hole takes the importance of putting out of the game, and make it mostly about long shots. But surely that's the party of the game that older players have the most difficulty with. If anything, you would attract more elderly with shorter holes (that is, have tees much closer to the hole.) Of course, if you're going to make the game more about the putting, they already have that: it's called miniature golf.
And that's why I don't like this idea. Even though I'm usually the guy advocating the discarding of sports tradition, I have to acknowledge that sometimes you're trying to change the sport into something it's not. So I'd say golf should stay the same and realize that if you live by the demographic shift, you die by the demographic shift.
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