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Inside GCM by Ed Hiscock, editor-in-chief |
A wrong kind of diversity?
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Anyone with an interest in golf — but especially those interested in the business of golf — has a stake in the continuation and progress of the game. Continuation and progress imply a sport that’s increasingly drawing new participants, people who are comfortable around the game and who believe that all aspects of the endeavor are open to them.
That’s why it was so disconcerting at last month’s Golf Industry Show to note the distribution on the show floor of a golf course industry publication editorial that actually argues against GCSAA initiatives to increase diversity among practitioners of the golf course management profession.
The editorial refers to a talk by GCSAA President David S. Downing II, CGCS, in which he said that GCSAA needs to “look more like America,” and in which he laid out the association’s plan over the next few years to increase involvement in the profession and the association of non-traditional participants.
While it’s a little shocking to see that extended welcoming hand described in the editorial as “blatant political correctness,” I’m blown away by the belief stated in the piece that, “It would be one thing to actively seek people based on gender or ethnicity if there were a shortage of talent entering the market, but there’s not.”
So exactly, what? Golf has more than enough talented white men managing its playing fields, so there’s really no need to swell the ranks any more with, for example, women or people of color? I hope I’m reading that wrong, but it’s hard to put another meaning to it.
The editorial blasts association diversity efforts as based on “flawed logic” and says that while diversity may be good for business, “it’s a weak argument to change the makeup of the association’s members.”
Let’s be clear. Doing something that’s right and good for business is never flawed logic. Non-traditional audiences — potential golf course maintenance professionals as well as new golfers — are the real targets of GCSAA’s diversity initiative. Golf is a business, and what we’re really talking about here is growing the game.
Perhaps most troubling in the editorial is the following sentence: “The simple reason there aren’t more female and black superintendents is because they obviously prefer to enter other professions.” I suppose there weren’t blacks in whites-only diners in the segregated South because obviously they preferred to enter colored-only diners.
The reasons for increasing diversity in our society are far from “simple,” and unless we open golf — all of golf — to a wider group of participants, the game will not evolve beyond its traditional demographic boundaries. With what it now takes to “look like America,” we need additional effort to make sure that the game — and the professions that surround it — reflects all possible players.
The editorial comes, of course, at exactly the wrong time for golf, so soon after the Golf Channel/Kelly Tilghman incident and the ensuing controversy over Golfweek magazine’s coverage of it, including the use of a hangman’s noose on its cover.
It’s easy to say that GCSAA and the superintendent profession “shouldn’t have to” reflect the people we hope will come to love the game and be its future customers. Easy to say and dangerous. Easy to say and wrong.
Golf doesn’t need any more of this.
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