It’s not exactly news that individual sports are in
decline, but for bowling, the solution is obvious.

John Chapman was born about 1775 in Massachusetts. As an adult, he said he was “called” on a mission, so he navigated a boatload of seeds down the Ohio River, then planted them over hundreds of miles of country. Many eyewitness accounts exist of this lonely recluse traversing down desolate back roads, randomly disbursing handsful of seeds. The country folk considered him “crack-brained,” beset with lunacy; the more forgiving labeled him an eccentric.

By the late 1830s, Chapman made his way into Indiana where he died of pneumonia. He was buried in Fort Wayne. Normally, his endeavors would have been quickly forgotten, but those countless strewn seeds did not let that happen. They kept growing and growing, and in time they bestowed an abundant harvest of nutritious apples with each passing year. Indeed, Chapman’s mission came to spectacular fruition (pun intended), and his contribution is still strongly recognized today. You know him as “Johnny Appleseed.”

I don’t liken myself to John Chapman, but I too have been on a mission, for almost 50 years now. My objective? Spreading seeds to restore team bowling as the number one format in bowling. When I started on this mission, I met with much ridicule and repudiation; however, recently I have begun to sense change and reappraisal. Why? That’s a topic for another column. But believe me, it’s happening. Yet, there are still powerful voices echoing the merits of singles competition as being superior to that of team concepts. In fact, a prominent industry leader recently proclaimed that team sports such as baseball and football are sub-standard when weighed against the likes of individual sports such as swimming and tennis. Let’s let in the light of reality.

The truth is that, across this nation, team sports are flourishing.  Professional sport teams are steadily expanding, and fan equity is at an all-time high. Buying a season ticket from many of these team franchises has become all but impossible. Park districts across the country find themselves in constant need to expand their team sport formats. In forest preserves, state parks, residential back yards, etc., one can’t help but witness countless numbers of people playing such games as softball, touch-football, soccer and volleyball. Yet this is not the case with individual sports.

Consider one of its prime activities: golf.
For many years, golf reigned as a burgeoning individual sport intricately involved with the corporate structure. That is no longer the case. The sport is in a recession. Since 2000, the people who play has declined from 30 million to 26 million. Even more perilous, those who play 25 times or more per year fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a 33% drop.

The industry now regards its regular players as those who play at least eight times a year or more; that number, too, has withered, but not as drastically, having gone from 17.7 million in 2000 to 15 million in 2006. The average sports fan will tell you that golf is “blossoming” because the professionals rake in huge sums of money; the reality shows another side. Recent surveys reveal that, though highly popular, televised major golf tournaments do not appreciably motivate onlookers to take up the sport. Jim Kass, Research Director for the National Golf Foundation, recently said golf’s prolonged slump has defied its adage, “Once a golfer, always a golfer.” Kass says about three million golfers quit playing each year, while slightly fewer than that have been picking it up. The Foundation’s two-year campaign to recruit new players into the game “has shown minimal results,” he said.

This problem is not relegated solely to golf. The erosion of golfing over the past several years is part of a broader decline in individual sports, including the likes of tennis, swimming, biking and skiing, according to a number of recreation industry reports. A 2006 study by the United States Tennis Association, which has had a strong effort to entice new participants, found that the growing popularity of electronic games was responsible for significantly reducing the number of active tennis players in the nation. Other excuses mount as well. “People just don’t have enough time,” one analyst wails. Says another, “It’s all about economics. Many people just can’t afford these activities anymore.” Adds a sociologist, “It’s about changing family dynamics. Today, fathers are more interested in driving their kids to their soccer games and music recitals.”

In truth, it’s not the playing of the game that’s the problem, but the game itself. There comes a point with some people when the game no longer inspires the needed interest and motivation required for them to continue to play. And though this metamorphosis is detected in all sports-related activity, it is found to be most prevalent among individual sports, not team. Why? Simply put, team sports have more to offer. It’s one thing to leave a sport; it’s another to leave a sport and a team. It’s one thing to give up the challenge and potential reward and satisfaction found in a given sport; it’s another thing to give all that up plus comradeship, bonding fellowship, a sense of belonging, permanence and the collective inspiration provided by loyal teammates.

Indeed, in today’s world, team sports are thriving, while most individual sports are encountering their fair share of difficulty. Also, bowling today is considered unequivocally to be an individual sport. Not coincidentally, it, too, is encountering its fair share of difficulty. Turning back the years, bowling was unquestionably considered a team sport in 1960… and the industry was booming.

You figure it out.

Reprinted with permission from Bowlers Journal International.
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