WHILE COVID-19 may have derailed many South Coast sports competitions in 2020, that was not the case for golf, with there being a participation boom across NSW.
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Clubs across the state are reporting spikes in membership numbers not seen in years, with Golf NSW affiliation numbers showing in increase by 4.2 per cent in regional centres.
In particular, nearly all of the Shoalhaven-based golf clubs have shown an increase in memberships.
Kangaroo Valley, while only having 66 members, is up 69.2 per cent on 2019, while Worrigee Links is up 12.3 per cent and Nowra up 5.2 per cent.
Mollymook (including Hilltop and Beachside) is up 4.8 per cent which is a lot considering they have the ninth largest golfing membership in NSW, with more than 1,300 members.
In terms of Mollymook, the amount of golf played by their members has increased by 15 per cent, while it's up more than 50 per cent by visitors - which is way above the state average increase of 30 per cent.
"It's been absolutely crazy on the fairways the past few months," Mollymook Golf Club golf manager Barry West said.
"We have been having days of 300 golfers on the greens, which normally only happens in the Christmas-New Year week but it happens regularly now.
"I've been involved in golf for 32 years (including eight at Mollymook), across three different countries and this is easily the biggest boom the sport has seen in Australia since the late 1980s when Greg Norman became world number one."
West believes reasons for this include other team sports stopping because of COVID-19 with golf being the only activity people could play, more people working from home, individuals feeling safe playing outdoors and younger people having more spare money because of the JobKeeper payments.
"These factors have seen more young players get involved in our sport, especially at tourism destinations like Mollymook, with a lot of Sydney clubs only allowing members still to play," he said.
"The numbers around the world have significantly increased and even when they drop back a little in the future, we still predict them to be much higher than they were.
"With so many more people playing, it's positively affected the whole industry.
"What used to be a seven-day turnaround from suppliers, now will take more than 30 - some suppliers already have a back-log to Easter next year."
Other clubs to increase its member numbers were Shoalhaven Heads (4.5 per cent) and St Georges Basin (3.1 per cent), while Vincentia stayed the same from 2019.
The only club to report a decrease in members was Callala, who is down seven per cent from last year.
At the time of writing, Sussex Inlet hadn't submitted their growth numbers to Golf NSW, who's chief executive officer Stuart Fraser is pleased to see interest in the sport back on the rise.
"While there's no doubt COVID-19 has contributed to a resurgence of interest in golf, it's easy to see that people aren't merely trying the sport then moving on to something else," Fraser said.
"People are coming back and playing golf more than once - it's clear a growing number are even stepping beyond just the social aspect of the game and joining a club.
"When people take the step beyond having a social game or have a hit at the local range and joining a club, it makes our club's stronger and the sport healthier."