It is one of the most profitable sports. However, as in many sports, club and hole enthusiasts earn both mere pennies and cosmic sums. The income of a professional golfer or coach is on average about 80 thousand dollars a year, but, say, the prize fund of a high-class championship amounts to tens of millions of dollars.
For example, American golfer Tiger Woods became the first billionaire athlete. However, most of the money (about 90 percent) he earned not in the fields, but in advertising. Tiger has been the highest paid athlete in the world for many years in a row according to Forbes magazine. In 2009, after a terrible car accident, Woods lost several sponsors at once and lost more than $50 million in contracts. But six victories in the 2013 season again returned the golfer to first place in the annual Forbes ranking.
According to him, “Tiger” earns from 78 to 83 million dollars a year. Only a deal with Electronic Arts, which develops a sports simulator, helped Woods earn more than 754 million over the years of the computer game. Other notable sponsors of Tiger Woods include TLC Eye Centers, Rolex, UpperDeck and many more. Some experts believe that this game, which was inferior to all the leading and most profitable leagues in America some 30 years ago, owes its sharp flourishing to Tiger Woods with his charming boyish smile.
For 45 years now, it has been not only an international but also an interplanetary sport. In 1971, during an expedition to the moon, the commander of the Apollo 14 spacecraft, Alan Shepard, became the first person to play this game outside the Earth. Moreover, the force of gravity on the yellow satellite is much less than on our planet, so the ball flew several kilometers after the impact.
Hybrid of sports and business
When playing golf, 17% of sales managers intentionally lose to their customers in order for them to buy from them. Among fans of aristocratic sports and its history, they actively and with pleasure cultivate such a bike, as if the word “Golf” is formed from the acronym Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden, which means “Only Gentlemen, Ladies Forbidden”.
However, a more plausible version still looks like the version that the word “golf” came from the Scottish golf, which meant “beat”. It was this term that was first mentioned in writing in a Scottish statute of 1457. Scotland, by the way, is officially considered the birthplace of this aristocratic sport.
One of the Australian golf clubs in its charter indicates that if during the game the ball hits a kangaroo, then you should not pay attention. In this case, you just have to play on. Well, as a bonus, a little fun. Texas golf pro Michael Furse hit the record with a 4m 20m club.
Golf has long and densely intersected not only with big money, but also with big business
Many argue that golf is not so much a sport as a way of life for business people. Analysts say that four out of five deals in Western countries, and indeed in Asia, are now concluded not in restaurants or meeting rooms, but on golf courses. And every tenth multi-million dollar deal is in checkered jumpers and clubs in hand.
In the Japanese golf club Tokyo City Club, entrance fees are the same, and the annual fee is $200,000. In New York, this is a smaller amount – 90 thousand dollars. However, approximately 40% of people who have joined clubs do not know how to play. They attend games to maintain the image of a wealthy and successful businessman. And at matches they get acquainted with influential politicians and other important people.