Randon Thoughts About Some Golf Stats

According to the website golfplayed dot com, there are 38,864 golf courses in the world, and of those, 16,752 are located in the US. Japan is in 2nd place with 3,169 courses. Scotland, widely agreed to be the birthplace of golf, is in 10th place with 614 courses. That's about 1 golf courses for every 200 square miles in the US, every 500 square miles in Scotland, and every 35 square miles in Japan.

An estimated 1 to 2 billion golf balls are made annually. That's roughly 25,000 to 50,000 balls per course, per year. Where do they all go? The folks in the golf subreddit, the best experts I know, say: driving ranges, water hazards, golf bags, garages, Bigfoot. Perhaps the #1 answer is; Yeah, I don't know either, that's a whole bunch of golf balls.

How many golf carts are there in the world? Or perhaps I should ask, after searching and searching for even one estimate: why is no one willing to answer this question?  But I see that the golf cart industry is about $2.5 billion a year and growing. At $5,000 to $15,000 a cart, that's hundreds of thousands of new carts a year. 

Hundreds of thousands a year. That's a lot.

Golf carts have been selling well since the 1950's. I'd say there have to be millions of golf carts out there. Not necessarily mostly on golf courses full-time either, because is there room for all of them on golf courses? Not all at once. I've seen a lot of golf carts on movie lots, in movies about movies.

And here's where I start to get paranoid: I've been paying rather close attention to electric vehicles for about a decade now. I had never been one of those Who-holds-back-the-electric-car guys until now, when I think about all those big shots playing golf, the guys who call the shots, riding around in millions of electric golf carts for the past half century or so. Electric, because almost all golf carts are electric, because golfers, just like the rest of, would rather not be bothered by the noise and stink of internal combustion.

All those big shots playing all that golf, riding around in those constant reminders that electricity provides perfectly good, reliable transportation, all the way back to the Eisenhower administration...

 

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"It's Golf O'Clock Somewhere!"

I have the impression that it's rare for golf players who are not pros to walk the course and carry their clubs the whole 3, 4 miles, instead of riding carts. I hope I'm wrong about that.

I heard a story about the Dallas Cowboys' management buying every player on the roster an electric golf cart. I was surprised: I knew some pro athletes were into golf, but I'd had no idea that many of them were into it that much. 

Than I wondered whether the real story here might be about the Cowboys' management being far out of touch with the daily lives of their players. I pictured some rookies who earn the NFL minimum, saying, "Thanks, Boss, I appreciate the gesture, I really do, but I still live in an apartment. How about paying me enough that I can buy a house so I'll have some place to park this cool new golf cart off the street?"

Then I wondered whether many individual golfers actually own their own carts, or if they just rent them at the course? I googled golf cart rental, and the rates are so high that it seems to me that the best thing might be to buy your own cart, and then buy a van to drive it back and forth from the course. Or just buy a 2010 Leaf and drive it to and from the course and use it as a cart, because that would be a lot cheaper. 

I wondered whether there are still many non-electric golf carts in use.

Then I researched the story and found that it was the Cowboys QB who had gotten a gift for all the players, not the management. And that he had bought each one an electric moped, not a golf cart. 

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