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In golf in France, Pascal Grizot is the man of the moment. L’homme du moment, you might say.
An elegant Frenchman aged 58, a scratch and passionate golfer, Grizot brought the 2018 Ryder Cup to France, circling the globe for seven years at his own expense to convince doubters that Le Golf National, 15 km from Paris, was the ideal site to host the 42nd biennial match. When Europe’s victory against the US attracted 300,000 spectators and brought an economic benefit of €200 million to his country, Grizot was proved spectacularly right. And now he has been elected president of the French Golf Federation.
Grizot is bursting with ideas for a sport that has a long history in France, starting with Arnaud Massy’s victory in the 1907 Open Championship and continuing when Catherine Lacoste won the 1967 US Women’s Open while still an amateur.
France has 733 courses, the third most in Europe after England and Germany, and it has 425,000 registered golfers, which ranks fourth among European countries and sixth among sports in France. The game generates £1.5 billion annually and accounts for 15,000 jobs, and yet Grizot believes there is still much more to be done.
Grizot, a successful businessman in his own right, has a four-year term as president of the federation to do something about it. He thinks €30 million should be enough to help him achieve his aims of significantly increasing the number of registered golfers in the country, and ensure France has men and women golfers, amateurs and professionals, among the top 20 players in the world.
These aims are not pie-in-the-sky. There was a 3-percent rise in affiliated golfers in France in the 10 years before 2018 at a time when some European countries lost 18 percent of their equivalent. The Ryder Cup legacy meant the creation of 102 compact urban venues and led, Grizot said, to 20,000 new golfers being registered.
Having a 14-year-old son with a handicap of 4, Grizot knows the importance of growing the game. Under his watch, specific school programmes will be implemented for children, not only to enable them to discover golf, but to play it regularly. He also believes it needs to be more fun, adding that, currently, 78 percent of young people stop playing golf after two years.
These aims are not pie-in-the-sky. There was a 3-percent rise in affiliated golfers in France in the 10 years before 2018 at a time when some European countries lost 18 percent of their equivalent.
One of golf’s biggest obstacles in France remains the country’s lack of sporting culture. Being an athlete does not bring the same prestige in France as it might, say, in the US, Australia or the United Kingdom. Little time is allocated to sport at school. It is not perceived as an essential part of the curriculum. Studies always come first within French families.
Aware of this imbalance, the federation funds two schools for its under-18 elite players, enabling them to play worldwide amateur tournaments while pursuing an academic route. There are two colleges with dedicated golf programmes – Golfsup on the west coast and Altus Performance in the north of Paris. But that is all. No wonder nearly 100 French youngsters attend college in the US.
Despite all this, French golf is far from stagnating. Victor Perez is ranked 35th in the world, Céline Boutier 57th among women. Romain Langasque, Joël Stalter and Antoine Rozner all won on the COVID-19-shortened 2019-20 European Tour and Victor Dubuisson is back playing more regularly after reaching No 17 in the world rankings in 2014.
In the amateur game, Pauline Roussin-Bouchard is currently No 4 on the World Amateur Golf Ranking, having been No 1 for a long spell last year. Adrien Pendariès is 63rd. The French won the European Boys’ Team Championship in front of their home fans at Chantilly in 2019. There will be further opportunities to assess the country’s progress at the 2022 Men’s World Amateur Team Championship at Le Golf National, and at the women’s equivalent at Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche. The 2024 Olympics in Paris, also at Le Golf National, is another target the authorities will have in mind.
In the meantime, golf in France continues to play catch-up. The federation opened a training centre at Le Golf National in 2018, but elsewhere high-performance amenities remain scarce with few on-grass practice and chipping facilities. That needs to be addressed.
Grizot also has plans to boost golf tourism. His idea of a “Play Golf in France” organisation was created last July with the cooperation of the International Association of Golf Tour Operators. PGIF intends to make France, not just Paris, a golfing destination by 2024, first targeting the US and UK markets in 2021. National Golf Week also should attract a large audience of enthusiasts at Le Golf National in the week before the Masters.
Grizot knows as well as anyone that France has a lot to offer. His efforts to raise the profile of the game in his country have been boosted by the return of the French Open, first played in 1906, to the European Tour’s international schedule.
In the future, Grizot hopes France will host a World Golf Championship every four years. Fanciful? Perhaps, but if there is one man who can achieve it, it is Grizot. He is, after all, the man who brought the Ryder Cup to France in 2018 and, in 2021, l’homme du moment.
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