Abstract

Golf now anchors an $88 billion global economy. Its player base has not widened to match. Through an interdisciplinary review spanning sports sociology, disability studies, and labor economics, read alongside government documents, legal mandates, and industry data, this article maps the barriers that still decide who plays: initiation fees and equipment costs, dress codes, legacy and referral membership systems, irregular low-wage work schedules, courses sited in affluent suburbs, a history of formal and informal racial exclusion, gendered wage gaps, and course designs that exclude players with disabilities. Because so much professional networking happens on the course, the same barriers also limit upward mobility. The article weighs countervailing developments too, among them entertainment golf venues, publicly subsidized courses, school-based instruction, adaptive equipment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and adaptive tournaments. Whether those interventions amount to more than symbolism, it concludes, will depend on scale and on who ends up leading the institutions of the sport.