Jeb, golf ain't dying.  We're in a period of "contraction", back to where golf would have been without the fiscal steroid injections.  Peter McCormick uses the investor-speak term "correction", a time when value pulls back to more realistic levels.  Golf was healthy and resilient in the 1970s, before the infusion of hype and starry-eyed non-golf investors; now we're in a long, slow correction.

By 2005, golf was as puffed up and helpless as a modern day factory chicken-house resident, unable to react to adversity.  Factory chickens are given all the food and drink they desire and live about 45 days before having a heart attack.  (Yard chickens, tough, lean and scrappy, live six or seven years.)

The modern golfer has become soft and weepy, unable to withstand less-than-perfect course conditions, requiring transportation and electronics to navigate the course, addicted to new balls and sticks every few months.  They're like factory chickens, they need to harden up.

The fantasy of perpetual growth as a sane business model is whacko, especially in a business that is not really what could be considered "essential".  Oil is an essential and it's not invulnerable to corrections.  

Golf could stabilize at numbers close to the middle of the "one-course-a-day" madness.  Golf could harden up and settle in for the long haul . . . if we don't screw it up by falling for the next Elmer Gantry of Golf preaching unlimited growth.  Let's just tough out this "Shrinkage" and be thankful that a good positive attitude can still fix things.

Here's a film from last year:  "Golf Ain't Dyin', It's Only Shrinkage"