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Successful Danish drive to get women into golf

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The R&A
23 Mar 23
3 mins
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The Danish Golf Federation created a framework to give hundreds of women the chance to try golf for the first time last year.

Jonas Meyer is Head of Development at the Danish Golf Federation (DGF), which has 186 member clubs. His colleague, Sarah-Cathrine Wandso, is a Development consultant, with one of her areas of specialism being women. The R&A supported the DGF in creating an effective, targeted social media advertising campaign for a series of eight-week programmes at golf clubs across the country. Each session included golf on the course as well as an additional activity designed to establish social bonds between the participants. By the end of the programme, the aim was for the women to be equipped with the confidence to play without supervision. A remarkable 75% of the women have continued to play after their programmes concluded. Both Jonas and Sarah-Cathrine outline a story of success…

Why did you target female golfers?

Jonas Meyer: “In a lot of our social media lead-generating activities, we saw that the majority signing up were women. Especially on Facebook, we saw that 60% were women. Yet within the golf clubs, it is 28% females. So we saw a change pattern. “In Sweden, they have done a lot of 50-50 – trying to change the entire set up around the golf club in order to get more female leadership. We felt we should start with recruitment so we had a conversation with The R&A saying if we should do something together, this could be a place to start. It’s not only Denmark – Holland and Finland are also involved. We wanted to do a national programme using social media in order to attract women golfers. “We knew that the social part of a programme, gluing the women together in a social community, is a lot more important than anything else. We introduced it to the Danish golf clubs that we wanted to test it as a pilot in March 2022 and ended up with 33 clubs participating, which is 18%.”
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The Danish Golf Federation created a framework to give hundreds of women the chance to try golf for the first time last year. 

How did you structure the programme? 

Sarah-Cathrine Wandso: “We found out that the programme should be around eight weeks. That was best for all the helpers and all the women. Once each week they practice and once each week they go and play on the course. They do that from the beginning, because we want them to be ready as golfers as soon as the eight weeks are gone. What we found out was that the social part was almost more important than the golf part. If we have them socially, they will keep playing golf.  “We have dance lessons, we have mind sessions, yoga, we walked to visit the greenkeepers just to see what they were doing. Some clubs close to the beach went swimming at night and had a sauna.  “We wanted them to do something after every session to make sure that they were together having fun. After the eight weeks we had a full group of women who wanted to keep playing golf – 75% of all the women play golf today. We try to make them a group by giving them a polo or sweatshirt and a bag with the logo on. We wanted to make the women feel special – it’s their night out and it’s okay to have fun. They’re perhaps not just a mum. And this is a place for them to be.” 

How was it received by the clubs? 

S-CW: “One of the fun parts is when you have 20 women in pink shirts dancing on the golf course, people notice and talk about it. We’ve managed to create a group of women who are actually allowed to be there. They feel like it’s okay for them to be there because there are many of them. All the places where we have tried this, the club think it’s a nice way to get new members because they have lots of humour, they are happy, they are enjoying themselves and they are good ambassadors for the club.”  JM: “The boards of the golf clubs really fell in love with this programme. They can say that they’re actually trying to change the golf club and the environment from the inside, from the bottom up. We try to create a group that feel safe and comfortable. Normally, when you start out in a Danish golf club, being a woman, for every time you see one female, you’re going to see three or four males. We want to make sure that you meet people that look like and resemble you.” 

Explain how you found the women. 

JM: “Half through social media. We targeted locally and only women on Facebook within a 20-kilometre radius of the specific golf club. The attendees signed up on Facebook and they knew the content of the programme. The price is £150, which is quite a high price actually in Denmark. But at the same time there was so much value in the programmes they were willing to pay for it. Each club had 20 women signing up. The other half through word of mouth. So it’s a national campaign but done locally.”  S-CW: "We helped the clubs find the women and we helped them to make the programme. They have to find their own volunteers and their own social activities. So every single club had their own programme. We spent every single penny on the women – no money went to the golf club. It gave them a glass of wine, a polo shirt, fun activities, sandwiches. Some golf clubs have big restaurants and can make special evenings and wine tastings. Some of them don’t really have anything and they just do picnics. The value proposition for the Federation was that we paid for the advertisements, we helped them with manuals, offered consultants, we did workshops. We helped them create the structure and the programme and the setup, but they paid the expenses themselves except for the marketing.” 

How do you control the quality of the product? 

S-CW: “I tried to be there as much as I could. I was there for meetings. I tried to visit them during the programme. Of course, it’s not very easy when you have 33 clubs. We had some workshops where we tried to give them the energy, the power, the excitement that I want them to have to prepare them for this. So that’s the best way we could do it.”  JM: “What is unique is the voluntary set-up. They really want to do something for those women because they are in the same situation as they were. Most volunteers can relate to being a new golfer in a male-dominated world. It has nothing to do with how to grip a golf club or swing it – it’s all about social relationships.  “As long as they feel the energy, then I think we can move forward and have more clubs participating. The overall recruitment of golfers had more women coming in, even though it was only 17% of the clubs participating. Our belief is that you recruit as you look. So if we can change the look from the inside, then we will also be able to recruit more women, not only in the clubs participating, but in general.”   The Danish success story is one of the featured pieces in the first edition of Developing Golf, a new monthly online magazine from The R&A.  As we aim to communicate with our affiliate network more closely, the publication is a key element of the golf development community we wish to create with our affiliates globally to share best practice.  Featuring engaging content from across national associations and striking imagery, please browse issue one here.

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