OVER recent months, there has been some healthy debate at a national level regarding the state of competitive county golf in England. In years gone by, being selected for one’s county was one of the highest honours that amateur golf had to offer. 

More recently however, and while there is no doubt that players still feel pride and purpose in county representation, the modern amateur game has evolved to a point where there is greater benefit to players by going to, or even preparing for, other tournaments. 

These other events are usually strokeplay tournaments, as opposed to county golf which is in matchplay format, and they appear to have a greater resonance with elite golfers when it comes to the benefits of a strong performance.  

The perceived benefits include a greater sense of achievement, World Amateur Ranking points and better recognition from peer groups as well as national selectors. As the best players feel they have to skip county matches in order to climb the ladder, the impression given to younger players is that they must do the same, and so the cycle can be repeated.

Consider the recent example of the Surrey v Kent league fixture where a total of six Surrey players were unavailable because of other commitments, including three who were playing for England on the same weekend, and an upcoming fixture against Sussex which clashes with the Welsh Open event, for which another six are also unavailable. This is not down to apathy but simply due to the greater appeal and reward of other events.

It is easy to put this problem down to ‘fixture congestion’ and suggest that more consideration needs to be given to the scheduling of county games. 

However, as more and more tournaments become part of the calendar, the increasingly congested schedule has little space to accommodate date changes and, even if new non-contentious dates could be found, the appeal that county golf currently projects doesn’t lend itself to players making it their first priority. 

This is a great shame, as we all know the positive emotions, as well as social benefits, that are generated when well-motivated teams come together successfully from the Ryder Cup and other team sports. It is worth nothing that county teams in the Northern regions seem to have less of a problem with this issue, and perhaps we can learn a lesson from them.

Why is this a problem? Well, county golf unions invest a great deal of money in player training and development. If they don’t collect the benefits of doing this, i.e. by having a regular group of players who play competitive fixtures for their county, then this money is not being invested efficiently and may be re-allocated elsewhere. 

Within the structure of the game, county unions play an important role at regional level by identifying and developing elite players, some of whom go on to represent England and turn professional. If county unions lose the incentive to do this, then the development system within the game will not be as strong as it might otherwise be. 

Given that there is a very healthy level of competition at elite level with standards being driven upwards as a result, there is, in economic terms, an over-supply of elite amateur players looking to play tournament golf. 

This is where county golf has a really good opportunity to modernise itself and actually create tournaments that elite golfers want to be part of. Instead of being an inadvertent victim as the game develops, county unions should be actively looking to come together as a group and position themselves as organisations that players want, and need to be part of, in order to further their amateur careers. Quite how they do this has been the core topic of the debate.

Golf is a game steeped in tradition, and is all the richer for it. However, the development of the amateur game has, in my opinion, reached a point where the traditional format of county matches has to be changed in order to better serve those who would play them, and to preserve a treasured aspect of team golf in a meaningful format.

The answer may lie in simply changing the way that the various county competitions are conducted, or it might require a much more fundamental change to increase ‘player appeal’, by changing to a strokeplay format that can provide the benefits that elite players seek.