INSIGHT | ?
What would Callaway Europe’s new boss do with $100 million?
Ben Sharpe, the new managing director and president of the equipment giant’s European division, says his bugbear is pigeon-holing people who just want to enjoy the sport
IT was quite the ‘what if’ scenario. Imagine for a moment that Callaway chief executive Chip Brewer had dug deep and doled out $100 million to Ben Sharpe.
Just what would the equipment giant’s new managing director and president of Europe, Middle East and Asia do with the cash?
Use it to research and develop another game-changing driver?
Speaking at Dundonald Links during Open week, Sharpe revealed he would choose a different path if he was handed the metaphorical money.
“I think it would just be to look at ways in which we can break down what continue to be barriers to playing our sport,” he replied.
“The more people who play the sport, the better we are all going to be. One of the bugbears I’ve got is we talk about growing the game but we continue to put up barriers – whether that be equipment restrictions, pigeon-holing people and saying, ‘that’s not real golf, that’s an alternative form of golf’.
“We’ve just had the European Championships. If we were to throw some jerseys outside, we’d play football. We wouldn’t play an alternative format of football. We’d play football.
“So sometimes we class things and we say that golf has to be a certain format and it has to be on a golf course. If you gave me $100 million, I would try and work with the whole industry to get people on the same page and just call golf ‘golf’.
“Let’s just call success getting somebody to hit a golf ball. When we do that, there’s so much more growth in our sport – rather than us restricting ourselves.”
Asked how facilities like Topgolf could help people pick up a club and move on through the different steps of the pyramid, Sharpe added that retaining players did not necessarily mean they had to play on a layout.
“We can retain them,” he explained. “I don’t think they have to play on a golf course. I think they can continue to play in a simulator or they can continue to play on a range.
“If you go to Korea, there are only 500 golf courses. There are 8,000 simulator facilities, and there are 2,000 driving ranges, and their golf economy is fantastic.
“So it’s what we define the game to be. If you take Topgolf for an example, there are 30 million people who play in a Topgolf facility every year.
“Let’s just call success getting somebody to hit a golf ball. When we do that, there’s so much more growth in our sport – rather than us restricting ourselves”
– Ben Sharpe, managing director and president of Callaway EMEA
“Of that, 67 or 68 per cent of people have never been on a golf course, and within 12 months of that, about 10 per cent [of that number] actually try it on a golf course.
“That’s hundreds of thousands of people who have never been on a golf course – because they played what we call an alternative format.
“If we’d embrace them into our sport, and don’t say, ‘you’re that and we’re that’, then I think we will break down those barriers and it will be more inclusive, it will be more attractive and it will be something that people will continue to flock to.
“I think moving up the pyramid and playing on beautiful courses is happening. But let’s not just think this is the only thing that matters.
“Let’s think there is a whole ecosystem around golf that matters and we can grow the whole pie.”
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