GOLF COSTS MONEY

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1057, 22 August 1930, Page 7

GOLF COSTS MONEY

Look At These Figures!

Some exceedingly interesting ■ golf statistics were released in England a month or two ago—so interesting/ in fact, that one wondered whether a Government in financial straits might not be tempted one day to make the golfer the victim of a special tax! In Great Britain, it is estimated, more than £28,000,000 is spent everv year on golf, five times as much as 20 years ago.

Then followed a budget showing the average business man’s list of annual golfing expenses. The .total amounted to £B6 13s, as compared with £32 odd in 1910.

Golf ball manufacturers must be making minor fortunes. Their total revenue, in Great Britain, taken on the consumption a, year of 30 balls a head, Is £1,692,000. Caddies receive about £5,640,000.

More than a quarter of a million acres in Great Britain and Ireland are “under golf,” the land being valued at about £7,500,000.

One consolation was offered the Briton in this statistical revelation of the high cost of golf. The annual cost a person in America is £440! No figures along these lines seem

to have been worked out here yet (says the “Sydney Sun”). Miss Wray, Australia's woman champion, thinks that it would be almost impossible to give anything definite on the subject. One can spend as much or as little as one likes on golf, says sh&. Excluding the cost of the clothes, she considers that a woman could get an enjoyable year’s golf for about £2O, without, of course, taking part in competitions or travelling about the countryside. On the other hand, the figures could mounl into hundreds.

Mrs. Spencer Watts, who is faniod for both her first-class golf (hei handicap is 14), and the perfection of her dressing on the links, admits frankly to a heavy annual golf expenditure.

In the vicinity of £IOO, she estimated the total cost of her yearly subscription (she was captain of the Australian Club associates for three years), green fees, sticks, balls, caddies, weekly competitions, luncheons, afternoon teas and various other social ramifications connected with club life, as well as trips to the mountains and country for tournaments and competitions.

Her golfing wardrobe this year, she thought, would run her into another £l2O at least. Much of it, of course, will carry her over to next winter.