Sunday, March 8, 2015

Dear Greensboro City Councilman Mike Barber; "Why America fell out of love with golf" and First Tee of the Triad

Some of the very people 
who will now likely run for some of these districts 
sat around a conference room table in downtown Greensboro
and helped draw the districts.

Mike Barber lying without any news outlet calling him on it

"...the business behind one of America's most slow-going, expensive and old-fashioned pastimes has rapidly begun to fall apart. TaylorMade-Adidas Golf, the world's biggest maker of golf clubs and clothes, saw sales nosedive 28 percent last year...

The coming years, present even more "significant negative headwinds" for the game.

Mike Barber's First Tee of the Triad's 2013 IRS Form 990; 


It's been years since the increasingly unpopular sport of golf plunked into the rough, and the industry now is realizing that it may not be able to ever get out.


...The game -- with its drivers, clubs, shoes and tee times -- is expensive both to prepare for and to play. It's difficult, dissuading amateurs from giving it a swing, and time-consuming, limiting how much fans can play.

Mike Barber admitting 

The number of Americans who said they played golf at least once last year has fallen to one of its lowest point in years...

benefiting from City of Greensboro Taxpayers

...The number of young people, aged 18 to 30, playing the game has sagged nearly 35 percent over the last decade.


"Every macro-indicator that we've been looking at for the past 20 years -- rounds played, number of minorities playing, women coming into the game -- all of these things that we tracked says that there's less people playing"

by Mike Barber's Campaign Treasurer

More golf courses closed than opened in 2013 for the eighth straight year

the number of course closures has sped up, averaging 137 closings every year since 2011

As Mike Barber is a direct beneficiary of Bryan Foundation money
via First Tee of the Triad,
through which he pads his income along with Greensboro taxpayer support 
Mike Barber had a conflict of interest
and should not have voted on Jim Melvin's Megasite project.

Dick's Sporting Goods, which bet big on golf in 2006 by buying specialty retailer Golf Galaxy for more than $200 million, has repeatedly acknowledged their bogey, shuttering stores and ending one experiment -- staffing a PGA professional in the golf sections of more than 500 stores -- by firing all of them."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/05/why-america-fell-out-of-love-with-golf/?hpid=z6