In particular, they hope millennials will be more interested in courses with only nine holes. Or even fewer.
5 min
Golf has been a game of 18 holes ever since the ruling bodies of the sport decreed it so at the end of the 19th century. But now, some course operators—and even the U.S. Golf Association—are challenging the idea.
The idea is that less could be more, in terms of breathing much-needed new life into the game. When would-be golfers don’t play, the main reason given is the length of an 18-hole round—typically four hours or longer.
While pros and many serious players will continue to play 18 holes, the industry is looking at ways to shorten the game for others. Lots of courses are marketing nine-hole options, and some tout even fewer holes than that.
“The most common complaint we hear is that the game takes too long,” says Steve Skinner, chief executive of KemperSports, a Chicago-based owner and manager of more than 100 courses across the country. “We need to let them know golf does not have to be a four- or five-hour experience.”
The USGA has lent its stamp of approval to shorter games, beginning with its “Play 9” initiative, launched in 2014, consisting of TV ads, especially during the heavily watched U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open telecasts, and an effort to give owners marketing ideas to promote the nine-hole option at their courses. The association also permits scores from nine-hole games to be posted on its USGA Handicap Index.
“The nine-hole round, the two-hour experience, is much closer to the type of entertainment people usually have,” says Rand Jerris, senior managing director of public services for the USGA. “Going to a movie. Two hours. Going to dinner. Two hours. Two-hour windows seem to fit comfortably in the American lifestyle. For people like that, nine holes works.”
According to the National Golf Foundation, there are 3,777 nine-hole golf facilities in the U.S., or about 26% of the total number of courses.
The shorter game is particularly targeted at millennials, who currently are playing a lot less than their parents or grandparents did at a similar age, mainly due to the game’s length, says Mr. Skinner.
To Kevin Berliner, at 32 a millennial himself, the problem is the mercurial nature of his generation.
“It’s about perception. Millennials will wait 3½ hours for the best burger in town, but will say 3½ hours for golf is too long,” says Mr. Berliner, who is a medical-device salesman and participates in the Young Executives Program at Cantigny Golf, a public course in Wheaton, Ill.
Cantigny and other courses market nine holes as an option for all golfers. But, as Mr. Berliner says, the shorter round is particularly attractive for people in his age group, especially at the end of a working day.
“It’s not just the golf course that matters,” Mr. Berliner says. “If we can go to a place where you can play nine holes and then get a burger and a beer, that is very enticing to the younger generation.”
Indeed, many facilities are looking to pair shortened rounds of golf with food and drink. Various versions of “Nine-and-Dine” promotions are being marketed to couples and families, and some locations are cutting even more holes. A six-hole round of golf with an on-course happy hour after play is offered at Chambers Bay, a course managed by KemperSports just outside of Seattle and the site of the 2015 U.S. Open.
Skyway Golf Course in Jersey City, N.J., offers another possible alternative—a shortened game, and beautiful greens, in a more urban setting. Built in 2015, this upscale, public, nine-hole course features challenging holes with dunes and a view of the Manhattan skyline. TJ Wydner, who oversees the facility, says Skyway did more than 40,000 rounds last year despite being closed for six weeks because of Covid. He says the course is more accessible and popular with time-compressed serious golfers who want to squeeze in a quality two-hour round.
Golf-course owners, especially in expensive urban areas, may find another benefit of fewer holes: cost. “We know that land is expensive and that it is expensive to maintain 18 holes,” Mr. Jerris says. “We know for the game to be sustained, it has to be on a smaller footprint.”
The timing for a shift to shorter games and courses seems favourable. The big story in the early 2000s had been the closing of many golf courses as a result of overbuilding for a big boon that never came. When Covid hit, operators prepared for the worst last summer.
Instead, the opposite occurred. With many entertainment options closed, people flocked to golf courses seeking to be outdoors, and to find a sense of normalcy. According to the National Golf Foundation, golf in the U.S. last year experienced a 14% increase in rounds from 2019, and that figure would have been much higher if virtually every course hadn’t been shut in the spring. More telling was the volume from June through year’s end: Packed courses had approximately 75 million more rounds nationally than in the same stretch in 2019.
Another dynamic also came into play. With people working more at home, thus eliminating their commutes in many cases, many found time to play golf, perhaps by sneaking out for an early-morning nine or shutting down the computer for a late afternoon round. In previous years, typical tee sheets often had plenty of vacancies from 2 to 5 p.m., Mr. Skinner says. Not last year.
“Those times were full every day,” Mr. Skinner says. The pandemic “completely flipped the tee sheet.”
Mr. Skinner does not think it was a one-year trend either. With expectations that many people will continue to work remotely once things return to normal, that means they will again have more time to play golf.
Mr. Jerris believes it is incumbent for operators to be creative, giving golfers more alternatives than just playing 18 holes. He notes that some courses are experimenting with fees based on the numbers of holes played or by the hour.
“Golf operators have to understand they have a lot of unused inventory on their tee sheets,” Mr. Jerris says. “Perhaps they can send players off the back nine when it is empty in the early morning. They can look at sending people out to play a few holes when there isn’t much daylight left. Those kinds of things are found revenue at no additional expense.”
Ultimately, it is about getting and keeping people engaged in the game, Mr. Skinner says. He speaks from personal experience. Even though he is a leading golf-industry executive, his children never got into the game before last year. During the pandemic, he often played late afternoon, nine-hole family rounds. Those outings led to his 23-year old son, Jack, getting the bug, as he played more than 30 rounds last year. Mr. Skinner now describes his son as “being addicted” to golf.
That is exactly the aim of the Play 9 campaign and other initiatives to get people out to the course. The idea is for them to become returning golfers, no matter how many holes they play.
“Golf is an addictive game,” Mr. Skinner says. “But first we’ve got to get people out to experience it. Once they do, hopefully they keep coming back for more.”
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: April 7, 2021.
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As millions flock to GLP-1s, doctors warn the drugs can cause rapid and significant muscle loss.
5 min
Chanel Robinson achieved exactly what the gold rush of blockbuster weight-loss drugs promised: She lost nearly 100 pounds, lowered her cholesterol to normal levels and reined in her polycystic ovary syndrome.
Yet, nearly three years into her journey on Mounjaro, the 30-year-old from Atlanta, Ga., is discovering the hidden costs of the slimmed-down life.
Robinson experiences muscle fatigue daily, feeling physically weak, frail and often cold. Robinson said she experiences bursts of sluggishness sporadically during the day, and has trouble with basic tasks like opening a jar. “It shouldn’t be this difficult,” she said.
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro and Zepbound have been a success for public health and the pharmaceutical companies that make them. Obesity rates are falling, the volume of food consumed in America is declining and retailers report a slump in sales of plus-size apparel. It has improved health and happiness for millions of people.
But for at least some of the 13 million Americans taking them, losing muscle along with fat is an unexpected downside that isn’t broadly discussed or immediately apparent.
The drugs can cause rapid and significant loss of lean muscle mass, up to 10%, comparable to a decade or more of aging, according to an analysis published by the American Diabetes Association.
The loss of lean tissue is similar to weight loss from dieting, but the magnitude over a short period can lead to frailty, instability and lack of coordination, doctors and researchers say. Another concern is that losing muscle could slow down patients’ metabolism, leading to weight regain.
“We are curing obesity by encouraging frailty,” said Daniel Green, principal research fellow at the University of Western Australia, who contributed to the analysis. Many taking weight-loss medications initially lose fat and feel great, but quickly start to feel weak and lethargic, he said.
Green’s research showed that the rate of muscle loss could be slowed significantly by regular strength workouts. “It should say ‘must be taken with resistance training’ on the box,” he said.
Drugmakers say weight-loss drugs should be taken only on the advice of a physician and as part of a long-term plan that includes diet and exercise.
A spokesperson for Eli Lilly, maker of Zepbound, said Food and Drug Administration guidelines say it should be used “with increased physical activity.” The spokesperson added: “Sustainable weight loss is about more than a number on a scale.”
Both Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk said clinical trials showed users did lose some lean muscle tissue, though at far lower rates than fat. Liz Skrbkova, a spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk, said that trials for its drug Wegovy showed changes in muscle mass didn’t “significantly differ” from patients who took a placebo. Eli Lilly said users lost three times more fat weight than lean tissue.
Rayna Kingston, 30, from Denver, said her injections of Zepbound left her feeling so tired the following day that she struggled to complete anything other than basic tasks. She said she shifted her dose to a Sunday because Mondays were her least busy day. Her partner would bring her meals in bed because she felt so weak.
She stopped exercising, and said her doctor didn’t give her any guidance on strength training or muscle maintenance. “I was relying on Reddit forums to understand what was happening to my body,” she said. She got so frustrated with the fatigue she came off the medication just under two months later.
Experts say that losing muscle at such a rate can be especially dangerous for those over 50 or with osteoporosis or limited mobility as it could lead to an increased risk of injury. “Loss of muscle mass is detrimental to moving around and quality of life, but it is also not safe,” said Katsu Funai, associate professor at the University of Utah.
Elderly Americans are set to be able to get GLP-1s from Medicare from July.
There is also pushback from doctors and regulators against using weight-loss drugs as a “quick fix” to lose a bit of weight.
People who take GLP-1s regain weight four times faster than those who lose weight through lifestyle interventions, and weight regained is often mostly fat, according to a recent analysis published in the British Medical Journal. There currently are few, if any, guidelines or studies on de-prescribing the drugs, researchers say.
The nurse practitioner who prescribed Robinson the medication didn’t warn her that resistance training is essential to maintaining muscle mass, Robinson said. She said she regrets not exercising and now does Pilates once a week.
In the haste to disrupt the obesity epidemic, weight loss has been treated as the singular, undisputed metric of success, which experts say is problematic.
“People worship body weight as an outcome measure because it’s simple, quick and inexpensive,” said Green. “But what matters is fat and muscle mass, which is more expensive to measure as it requires an MRI.”
Grace Parkin, 34, a property manager from Sheffield, England, has lost 125 pounds after she started taking Mounjaro in 2024. “I don’t care about my muscle mass as long as I’m a healthy weight,” she said.
The doctor who prescribed the drug didn’t tell her to exercise, though the pharmacy that sold the medication gave her information on exercise and protein intake, she said.
She didn’t exercise and said she soon felt side effects: a “deathly cold, from the inside” likely because of the drug. Still, she vowed to keep going, saying the weight loss was worth it.
In response to some of the side effects, drug companies are hoping to develop weight-loss treatments aimed at preserving or even building lean muscle mass.
German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim recently said it had promising results from one such drug. Eli Lilly last September halted a trial of a similar drug.
While weight-loss medications are designed as lifelong treatments for chronic diseases, namely obesity and Type 2 diabetes, they are increasingly marketed as lifestyle fixes.
Tennis superstar Serena Williams, who used GLP-1s to slim down after having children, was featured in this year’s Super Bowl commercial promoting telehealth company Ro’s weight-loss medication.
Serena Williams poses for an ad campaign for a weight-loss drug. Ro/Handout/Reuters
Women may be particularly vulnerable to the drugs’s side effects, which can also include nausea, diarrhea, migraines and rarer cases of pancreatitis.
A study last year from a university hospital in Turin, Italy, showed that women are more prone to adverse reactions to weight-loss drugs than men, including muscle loss.
Green, the researcher, said the issue is of particular concern to those taking GLP-1s recreationally and who don’t have much muscle mass to begin with. Others say a lack of oversight is compounding the issue.
“Patients are self-reporting, and telehealth companies don’t have the patient in front of them to conduct a proper medical assessment,” said Rupal Mathur, an internist in Houston whose practice specializes in weight loss.
She said medical spas are prescribing off-label drugs that don’t meet the criteria set out by the FDA that justify a prescription.
The number of people taking weight-loss drugs who are not living with obesity or Type 2 diabetes is difficult to track since it is unregulated.
However, an analysis by the FDA from 2023 found that more than half of new Ozempic and Mounjaro users didn’t have Type 2 diabetes.
Scientists are calling for more clinical trials to pin down the full effects of weight-loss drugs on muscle loss in different demographics.
“The only studies that have been done have looked at people living with obesity or Type 2 diabetes,” said Green. “That makes it all the more concerning for those using weight-loss drugs in an ad hoc or unregistered way.”
