NEW YORK. An article in this week's Economist notes that, for the first time in years, the number of golf courses closing have exceeded the number of courses opening in the U.S. They note that even the number of rounds of golf have declined by 4% since 2000. Even Myrtle Beach, SC, the self-titled "Seaside Golf Capital of the World," has slid backwards since 1999, after seeing a tripling of courses (to 105) in the last 25 years. They've lost a net of six courses since 1999. This surely seems to buck the trend we've seen in NYC, where the number of golfers have skyrocketed, packing courses to unplayable levels (cases in point: a 7+ hour round at Dyker Beach, Brooklyn, 2 years ago, and 2 holes at Pelham/Split Rock, Bronx, which took over 1.5 hours and caused us to pack it in).

New York. Check this out. They're bringing golf to Rockefeller Center, right in mid-town Manhattan, New York City, New York.

According to this blogpost at Gadling.com, the PGA is going to be recreating the 17th hole island green from the TPC Sawgrass course, right in the skating rink! (The original is pictured at right.)

Get it while it's hot: the exhibition only lasts from May 4-13, 2007.

Bloomberg reports on the Czech's resurgent interest in golf. Although the communists tried to kill it off because it was seen as bourgeois, in some, the spirit of golf never died. Now, almost twenty years post communism, the number of Czech courses have almost doubled, to 69, which is more than the rest of Eastern Europe and Russia combined.