Germany has more female golfers than UK

The UK now has fewer female golfers as members of clubs than Germany, despite having four times as many golf courses and being known as the ‘home of golf’.

It is the first time that the UK has failed to come top in Europe on any participation in golf survey.

According to a report by KPMG, more than three quarters of Britain and Ireland’s 1.2 million golf club members are adult males – and just 14 percent are adult females. In Germany, where golf has grown in popularity in the last few years, 35 percent of its now 660,000 members are adult females.

This means that the country has 222,000 female golfers registered as members of clubs. In the UK the figure is only 180,000.

The UK and Ireland collectively have just under 3,000 golf clubs, representing 44 percent of all the venues in Europe.

Germany only has 719 golf courses, the first of which, the Berlin-Wannsee Golf and Country Club, was built in 1895 – at least 150 years after the first golf club was built in Britain.

“Britain and Ireland still have far and away the most number of golfers – more than four million in total,” said an industry insider.

“But a disproportionately high number are adult men. This has always been the case, but what’s new is that the vast majority of golfers in the UK are now ‘nomads’ who are not members of golf clubs.

“In fact clubs in the UK and Ireland have lost more than a quarter of a million members in just the last six years.

“To lose such a valuable income stream is painful but it’s clear where the shortfall can be made up. Germany now has more than 40,000 more female members of golf clubs than the UK and Ireland – even though the participation in golf rate as a proportion of the overall population is actually still less than half the size in Germany than it is in the UK.

“It might be time for British golf clubs to learn from their German counterparts about how to attract women to golf clubs.”