In the period since the Second World War, golf in the United States has gained in popularity both as a spectator and participatory sport. In the late 1940s and 1950s, golf began to gain appeal as a status sport associated with the wealthy and with business. The obsession of President Eisenhower with the game—he played over 800 rounds while in office—symbolized a sport which was viewed as a pastime of the elite.

Just as golf was beginning to become a staple of televised sports, the arrival in the early 1960s of a new breed of professional golfers—young, athletic and charismatic—fed a new fascination with the game. No player symbolized the new feeling associated with golf more than Arnold Palmer. Palmer was blessed with both an excellent game and an easy-going charm which together won him a devoted following known as “Arnie’s Army” Palmer, from Western Pennsylvania, rose from humble beginnings, encouraging others to reassess the view that golf was just a game for the well-off. At the same time, a younger golfer named Jack Nicklaus emerged as a foil for the more popular Palmer. In time, Nicklaus would eclipse Palmer and become the most accomplished American golfer of all time.

As a result of the professional game’s increased visibility public and resort golf-course construction became a growth industry in the 1970s and 1980s as the middle class clamored for a place to play the game at a price within their reach. This period saw the continued rise in the profile of the professional game, and a host of new stars, including Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw and Curtis Strange.

The 1990s, while still a boom time for the men’s circuit, saw the rise of a second tour, the Senior Your for men fifty years and older, as well as a somewhat more vitalized women’s tour. Women constituted the largest group of new golfers in the 1990s.

However, exclusionary practices still exist to bar women from some of the more prominent private clubs. Moreover, public courses sometimes discourage women’s play with the result that women also constitute the largest percentage of golfers who give up the game. The practice of minority exclusion continues as well, although the subject has become more hotly debated in the last few years. In 1991 the Professional Golfers’ Association threatened to move its championship tournament from the Shoal Creek Golf Club because of the club’s practice of exclusion, and a number of other clubs have been dropped from the professional tour for failing to recruit African Americans to their membership. Most recently a young star named Tiger Woods has emerged who claims both African and Asian ancestry. His prominence may spur further re-examination of the membership practices at private clubs across the nation, and may encourage more minority youths to take up what has until now remained a sport played mostly by whites.