A Global Game With Global Players: Diminishing Contrasts and Increasing Varieties in the Working Lives of Professional Golfers

This paper draws on interviews with 20 touring professional golfers to examine the influence of the global spread of European tournaments on players’ approaches to the game. Results indicate that a variety of processes, such as attempts to standardize course set up and typography of host country, have led to a diminishing of contrasts and, at the same time, increasing varieties in the way that golfers approach the game. Players are constrained to develop similar types of play to each other, with a greater emphasis on hitting long accurate shots, while also being required to manage constant varieties of grass types, climates, and altitudes. The theory of diminishing contrasts and increasing varieties is used to help explain the growing homogenization of players’ games while also recognizing the variety alongside this, both in terms of playing style, at different levels, and styles of courses, at all levels.