Abi Owers and Gavin Beddow have left their roles at American Golf to set up The Golf Group, a new company focused on the continued growth of the game.
The Golf Group has been built to address some of the challenges representing golf today, and will focus on developing new shorter game formats, supporting golf clubs with their strategy, and building partnerships with bodies and brands to make golf more inclusive and accessible to all.
Owers, who left her role as head of marketing at American Golf in February to focus solely on building The Golf Group, said they have one clear focus – ‘exist to grow the game’.
Since February, the company has made significant inroads into developing a short form game which is set to be released in the next few weeks. Golf clubs are being invited to be the first to sign up to the concept that claims to knock almost half the time off a traditional round of golf.
Co-founder Gavin Beddow, who was formerly American Golf’s National Academy Manager, said they are opening the game up to 100 clubs initially and invited interest via the short form golf page on The Golf Group website.
The company will also use its experience in community engagement and events to launch a series of tournaments to address some of the barriers to golf, making it more accessible and inclusive. Their first Inclusivity Tournament is due to launch in June – offering golfers the chance to team with non-golfers as well as able-bodied golfers to team with golfers with a disability.
Owers, who has spent the majority of her career in senior marketing roles in the sport, healthcare and retail sectors, said The Golf Group enabled her to combine two passions – her love for the leisure industry and her love of marketing. Her passion for insights, market trends and finding solutions for the greater good was what drove her to team up with co-founder Gavin Beddow.
“We met during our time working with American Golf – I led the Leisure Marketing Strategy and Gavin the Academy – and we quickly realised that we shared a passion for taking golf to the community and bringing the community to golf. The Golf Group was a natural progression for us – enabling us to focus full-time on ways to evolve the game, support more clubs and also to join the mission in helping address the accessibility and inclusivity challenges facing golf.”
She added: “The golf market is currently booming, with the second highest participation rates since records began. The health and wellbeing benefits of golf are being widely documented and there’s a new ecosystem emerging that’s making golf more mainstream. Relaxation of dress codes, the launch of places like TopGolf, the increase in the number of driving ranges, adventure golf facilities, junk yard golf and virtual golf sites, have meant more people are experiencing golf for the first time and are therefore more inclined to give golf a go.
“Despite the boom, golf is still a tough market for operators. We need to take golf on a more accessible journey which is going to be a lot easier with shorter formats that make golf less daunting and are less time intensive. We’re living in a fast-passed, digitally-enabled and very busy world, the days of 4-5 hours enjoying a slow round of golf at the weekend are fast disappearing. We need to find ways to speed the game up without compromising on the enjoyment, or the quality of golf, but at the same time making it perhaps a little bit more fun.
“We have been working on a new format for some time after being inspired by baseball in the US where shorter game formats have dramatically impacted fan engagement and numbers. The new format will be available from May, with clubs starting to sign up now. We have built an infrastructure ready to go live which includes on-going free marketing support with content to drive new players to clubs as well as engage existing players too.”
Any club interested in finding out more should visit www.thegolfgroup.co.uk.