Brennan: More changes needed to grow the game of golf

• Every year%2C more golfers give up the game%2C for various reasons
• Golf%27s history as an elitist and exclusionary sport has hurt its effort to grow with the times

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The game of golf is in serious trouble, but it has little to do with the aging of Tiger Woods.

Every year, as many as 1 million participants decide to stop playing golf. Their reasons? It's too expensive. It takes too long. It's too hard. It's too elitist.

The recession of 2008 hit the game particularly hard, with stuffy country clubs doing the unthinkable: reducing fees and practically begging people to join. But golf's leaders otherwise have been stunningly slow to react, and they have their reasons: What they must do to make their game more appealing to prospective new players will alter – and perhaps destroy – what they love most about the game.

Women playing the game beside men? Bigger holes for beginners? Three-hole rounds? Day-care at country clubs and public courses? Weekend hackers playing from the forward tees, the place they always derisively referred to as the "ladies' tees"?

I really don't think these middle-aged white men have it in them to do this. Which means golf is destined to continue to hemorrhage participants and further ensure its place as a mostly-white, suburban, rich men's niche sport with plenty of TV sponsors who make cars, write insurance and invest money.

I so want to be wrong about this. I want to see inner-city kids become champions on the PGA and LPGA Tours, or become our future business and political leaders because they learned the wonderful life lessons golf can teach them from programs such as The First Tee, a respected youth organization. I want to see a woman become so good she can compete with the men in a U.S. Open. I want to see boys and girls of every race and ethnic background flock to golf.

But it's not going to happen the way things are currently being done.

Look at how hard it has been for golf's power brokers to make the most obvious business and public-relations move and invite women into their private clubs. It took Augusta National Golf Club until August 2012 to invite its first female members: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and financier Darla Moore. Several clubs around the country still will have none of that, including Pine Valley in New Jersey and Burning Tree in Maryland, where Speaker of the House John Boehner is a member.

What kind of message does that send, that the Speaker of the House feels comfortable being a member of a place that discriminates against 51 percent of the population that he serves?

It sends the message that men don't want women around them when they are playing golf, that's what it sends. Discriminatory, male-only clubs put out a big stop sign that has a chilling effect on girls' and women's participation in the game at a time when golf needs them the most. Private clubs can do what they want, of course, but those decisions are not without consequences.

Isn't it something that sexism still trumps capitalism, even among the most stalwart capitalists in our midst?

Golf will never be as accessible and inexpensive as sports such as tennis, basketball and soccer. But it can do much more than it has so far to welcome new players, if only its leaders decide to truly grow the game rather than keep it the way it always has been.