Golf is Fading Away

Sport England recently announced their latest ‘once a week participation figures for each funded sport’.
Please note these figures from the Active People Survey (APS) are usually run on a twelve month rolling basis from October to October. As we are only part way through 2013, the APS7 figures represent a twelve month period from April’12 to April’13.
Here are the ‘once a week participation’ figures for Golf.
APS1 (Oct 05–Oct 06) – 889,100 APS2 (Oct 07-Oct 08) – 948,300 APS3 (Oct 08-Oct 09) – 897,600 APS4 (Oct 09–Oct 10) – 860,900 APS5 (Oct 10-Oct 11) – 833,200 APS6 (Oct 11-Oct 12) – 850,500 APS7 (Apr 12-Apr 13) – 772.800
From these figures you can deduce that 116,300 fewer people now play golf once a week in 2012/13 compared with 2005/06.
Instead of debating the length of the putter professional golfers should use in competition the R&A should turn their attention to the downward participation figures for golf in England.
Ian Woosnam also pitched in with 'Welsh golf is fading away'. ---------------------------------------------------------