Late in his life, American civil rights icon John Lewis was fond of reminding audiences that those who didn’t know how far we’d come just hadn’t been paying attention, and those who didn’t know just how far we still had to go just hadn’t been paying attention.

How far to go to arrive where? Lewis’ “beloved community,” something approximating the aspirational words about equality in the document that “declared” American independence from Great Britain.

The aspirations are certainly much lesser, the scope smaller, the community less beloved, the impact less significant and the subject matter inconsequential by comparison, but after a lengthy career in golf “advocacy,” I find that John Lewis’ same words apply.

One need look no further than the following specific examples to understand just how impactful the game’s recent advocacy efforts have been:

• The “Public Golf Endangerment Act” campaigns to defeat AB 672 and AB 1910.
• The retention of independent contracting PGA Golf professionals and Youth Sports Coaches.
• The continuation of golf during COVID.
• The successful insertion of the specific words, “golf courses,” in AB 1570’s listing of the uses of turf exempt from potable water proscriptions.
• The crafting of regulatory protocols that have allowed golf to continue using certain substances otherwise banned but important to golf maintenance.
• The creation of multiple regional “golf & water task forces” that have positioned the game to not just survive, but thrive.
• The creation of myriad municipal golf commissions, committees and boards that have accomplished so much to defend and advance the cause of the game’s growth.

But it’s really the non-tangible, non-specific examples I would offer as the more impactful, first among them golf’s focused campaign to communicate to the 90 percent of the population that doesn’t play golf the value proposition of living in a neighborhood that has one or more golf courses — a community benefit proposition to be sure, but a personal benefit proposition as well.

If enough of the 90 percent believe that the golf course in their midst provides public green space, active recreation for persons of all ages, environmental advantages, heat relief, carbon sequestration, youth development, senior centers, sites that raise funds for local charities/institutions/clubs and a few dollars over and above all that to help fund valuable public recreation programs that are not capable of recovering costs, then golf will continue to achieve good outcomes in the public arena.

If too many of the 90 percent define golf as too much land that uses too much water to serve the interests of the too few who have had too much for too long, then golf is sure to flounder in the public sphere. The grandest strategies, cleverest tactics and nimblest maneuvers can rarely overcome deeply held prejudices.

WHERE THERE’S A WILL

To break down and then reverse the prejudices that we know are still held by many, golf must not just “communicate” the virtues that suffuse a cogent narrative about the game’s community benefits but craft and then disseminate that narrative so that it resonates with the 90 percent who don’t play the game. In other words, preach not to the converted but to those that golf needs to convert, not by speaking in golf-speak, but in a language that strikes the chords of their interest.

And golf has been doing just that in recent years — at least here in Southern California. If the “specific examples” above don’t persuade you of that, let me add the following: The game has enjoyed an amazing reversal of fortune in “saving” the kinds of small developmental golf facilities that not too long ago it was losing with nauseating regularity and in the last few years has been winning with almost equal regularity, as evidenced by such places as disparate as Los Angeles’s Sepulveda Basin, San Diego’s Mission Bay, Montebello, Carson, Compton, Azusa, El Segundo, Pico Rivera, Brea and Palm Springs.

All these communities stepped up to defend the societal benefit of golf versus proposed alternatives, both recreational and commercial, evidencing the power of the game’s focused effort to flip golf’s narrative.

Having written all these words in support of golf having come a long way in a short time, let me close with cautionary words about how far golf still needs to go if it hopes to compete successfully in an environment where each day finds more and more sectors contributing more and more resources to all aspects of what we loosely call advocacy. In a state that saw close to $500 million expended on direct forms of advocacy in 2023 — more when one factors in indirect contributions — golf cannot expect to keep enjoying the successes outlined here if it fails to scale up and more amply fund the structures that generated those successes.

But that really is the good news. The hard part is done. The structures are in place. The path forward is clear. Scaling up should prove easy by comparison. But only if the game and its advocates can summon the will to do so. The jury is still out on that count.