Do English Golfers Get The Recognition They Deserve?

Chris Wood called the coverage British tennis players get as 'frustrating' compared to what golfers get

Do English Golfers Get The Recognition They Deserve?

With 12 Englishmen currently inside the top 81 of the Official World Golf Ranking, golf in this country at the professional level is booming.

Related: Is this a golden generation for English golf?

In 2016, England captured its first Masters title of the millennium courtesy of Danny Willett and saw Justin Rose win the first Olympic Gold Medal for golf in 112 years.

In addition to those feats, English players made up half of the 2016 European Ryder Cup team.

Yet do our golfers get as much recognition as they deserve?

Here's what GM Playing Editor and 2016 BMW PGA Champion Chris Wood said in his pre-tournament press conference today at Wentworth:

"There are sort of ten of us now in my age group that have come through amateur golf together and come on to The European Tour and broken into the Top-50 in the world; some of us playing Ryder Cup and things like that all at the same time.

"You know, if it was tennis, it would be global news and golf really deserves a lot more credit for the standard of English golf.

"Golf is one of our biggest national games.

"I know we're working hard at promoting the game in different ways but the standard of English golf is really as high as it's ever been though.

"I buy a paper quite often and look at the back pages. When you read about (tennis) players that are 100th in the world, but they are ranked No. 2 in tennis in the U.K. and things like that, it is quite frustrating, because we're working just as hard as they are."

Participation

Figures from England Golf in December 2015 show that 'Overall 740,100 people, aged 16-plus, play golf in England for at least 30 minutes once a week.'

Those numbers may be closer to a million if you take into account the under-16s.

According to www.statista.com, between October 2015 and September 2016, approximately 721,100 people in England played tennis on a monthly basis.

These figures show that golf is played more in England than tennis is, so perhaps Chris Wood is right in saying that golfers do not get the recognition from the mainstream media that they deserve.