What is the average age of a golfer?

Those who want to be cruel mock golf as a sport for the retired. It has definitely had a reputation as a pastime people turn towards when they’ve stopped doing other things.

Golf club membership gets the worst of it, with doom-laden predictions for the future of the game with every new set of statistics that shows the ages of club players might be rising.

But what is the truth of it? What is the average age of a golfer and how does it split between members and non-members? Let’s dig into the numbers…

Average age of a golfer

How old are golf club members?

There is no dressing it up. There are some greyer hairs in our clubhouses. Hillier Hopkins’ annual Members’ and Proprietary Golf Clubs’ Survey for 2023/24 revealed that in the UK, around 44 per cent of golfers at private members’ clubs are 61 or over.

They revealed 23 per cent are aged between 61 and 70, 21 per cent are 70 or older and 20 per cent are in the 51 to 60 bracket.

That first figure is nearly as much as the recorded combined numbers of every other category of player from juniors up to the age of 40.

Hillier Hopkins reported it was a broadly similar picture at proprietary clubs – with just over half of members aged 51 or older.

But England Golf’s figures are far more encouraging. Drawing on the 730,000 club members who pay affiliation fees to the governing body, they report the average age of a golf club member is 54.99.

That is reduced from 56.18 and the age has decreased for both males and females.

The average male has gone from 54.98 to 53.78, while the average female has reduced from 64.65 to 62.98.

The governing body can even split these figures up on a county-by-county basis.

The youngest golf club members, on average, can be found on the Isle of Man. They weigh in at 51.37 years of age on average, with Middlesex (52.66) and Cornwall (53.31) also pretty sprightly.

The oldest golf club members, in comparison, can be found in Dorset. At 56.93 they’ve lived a few more days than Devon (56.76).

English Golf Club Members’ Average Age

What about elsewhere? The picture in the biggest golfing market, the United States, can vary depending on where you look but, in 2020, GolfPass, though Golf Life Navigators, reported a significant drop in the average age of new club members – from 58.6 in 2017 to 54.9 in 2020.

How old are players who are not golf club members?

Prepare to raise your eyebrows. While older players might dominate club membership, we’re seeing a much younger profile of golfer actually out on the course.

The PGA’s Golf for All research revealed at the back end of 2023 that the largest single group of players in the UK and Ireland were actually people aged 35 to 44.

They made up nearly a quarter of the 4.9 million golfers who play on a golf course each year and there were plenty of younger players getting involved too. There were also nearly as many 18 to 24-year-olds and 25 to 34-year-olds playing as over 65s.

In England, where more than 55,000 golfers are signed up to the governing body’s iGolf scheme – which allows non-club members the opportunity to gain a World Handicap System index – the average age of a male subscriber is 43. For females, it is 48.

In the United States, the average age of a golfer has fallen substantially since the Covid pandemic. The National Golf Foundation reported last October that, since 2019, it has dropped from 44.6 in 2019 to 43.5 in 2023 – with the number of on-course golfers increasing by nearly 2.3 million.

They reported that 71 per cent of post Covid rounds growth had come from players under 50.

Mirroring the PGA’s own research in the UK, they said the largest group of on-course golfers was within the 18 to 34 cohort – a figure that approached nearly 6.3 million.

Our view: What does this mean?

So why aren’t those younger players signing up? There aren’t too many surprises here. For a sport that has spent quite a long time trying to appeal to this demographic, it’s a tough task with membership.

There are obvious reasons. Golf club membership can be expensive – even if you consider it great value for what you receive – and the membership model at lots of golf clubs can also tend to suit those who can utilise it the most.

A 70-year-old able to play three times a week gets far more out of their chunky membership fees than a 40-year-old who might only be turning out once a fortnight.

Time is also an oft quoted barrier.

Yet we know younger people are playing the game in numbers. Some of the figures above prove that. And if you could get them to join… well, the 55,000 iGolf subscribers would account for just over 7.5% of the total number of golf club members in England.

There have been successes in this area. England Golf estimate by the end of this year as many as 20,000 players will have moved from the independent golfer initiative to club membership since the scheme’s launch in the summer of 2021.

When you look at the wider picture, though, and the huge numbers of people playing golf who aren’t yet connected to clubs, could it be many more?

Of course, as circumstances change for these players – more time, more disposable income, children who are older – they may gravitate towards membership. That has certainly been the pattern for many of us over many years.

But by providing innovative membership options for those who can’t take advantage of intermediate fees, and don’t feel a full 7-day membership suits them at this point, couldn’t there also be scope to bring many more younger people into the club environment right now?

Traditional members have sometimes been sceptical, and downright suspicious in some cases, of limited-play memberships, points and other flexible schemes, but there are numerous examples of clubs that have embraced such options and seen surges in numbers.

If clubs want to diversify their age group, but are sticking firmly to the old-school 7-day model and its like, they shouldn’t be surprised to find the tried and tested doesn’t cut it.

Now have your say

What do you think of these figures about the average age of a golfer? Do they chime with what you are seeing out on the course? Let us know with a comment on X.

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