By Paul, Founding Editor, +20 Handicap
Issue 007 | The Hidden Room
The short version: golf’s biggest moment of the year, the Masters final round, still mostly gets watched the way it always has, alone, on a sofa, with a group chat doing the reacting that should be happening around you. That’s starting to change. Off-course venues, bars, simulator lounges and events among them, are already pulling close to 90 million people worldwide into areas built for watching and playing together, and most of golf hasn’t noticed yet, or hasn’t marketed it properly. I found this out by accident, before I ever thought to write about it.
Three years ago, I was in London with a friend, killing time with nothing planned, when we realised McIlroy was leading the Open. We found a bar showing it and ended up sat outside with a load of other fans, most of them strangers. The atmosphere was electric. It was the first time I’d watched a live round with other people around me instead of on my own, and it changed how the whole afternoon felt. I wanted to do it again after that. What stopped me wasn’t the golf. It was that nobody tells you these rooms exist or an agenda.
A big moment doesn’t land the same on your own. Golf has never been short of big moments. What it’s never quite had, at least not anywhere obvious, is a way of telling you where to find a place to socialise around the sport.
Does golf actually still get watched alone?
Mostly, yes, and I’d been doing exactly that for years before that night in London without ever noticing it as a gap. Catching a leaderboard on my phone, half-watching in the background, a group chat doing the reacting that should be happening face to face. It’s just how golf gets watched, so much so that it doesn’t register as a choice. 2025’s Masters final round pulled 13,995,000 viewers on CBS, golf’s biggest TV audience in 11 years, peaking above 20 million during the playoff. The moments are clearly still landing. What isn’t there, for most of that audience, is anyone else around when they do.
So has golf actually found its room, or not?
Not on the broadcast side, not yet. But that bar in London wasn’t a one-off, and once I started looking, it stopped feeling like one. Away from the TV numbers, off-course golf, driving ranges, simulator lounges, social venues built for hanging out rather than a solo round, has been growing into exactly the kind of shared space golf’s broadcast side has never had, largely unremarked on. Between the R&A’s count of players off-course worldwide and the National Golf Foundation’s count in the US alone, that’s close to 90 million people already choosing that version over the traditional round. That’s not a niche. That’s a scene already assembling itself, just not anywhere the Masters ratings would think to look.
Why has nobody credited this yet?
A big moment doesn’t land the same on your own. In a room like that, everyone reacts at once, together. It’s the whole mechanism football’s pub culture runs on, and it turns out it was never exclusive to football. It just needed somewhere for that to happen off the course.
Nobody’s really credited that yet, because the people measuring golf’s culture are still looking at the broadcast, the ratings, the majors, and that’s a reasonable place to look if the question is how golf compares to football as a TV product. It’s the wrong place to look if the question is whether people actually want to watch golf together, because the venues furthest from a clubhouse are already answering that question, just without a ratings number attached to prove it, or a proper list telling you where to find one, which is still the part I’d fix first.
Golf’s culture has a habit of turning up somewhere unexpected before golf itself catches up to it. Issue 006 traced the same pattern through fashion, decades before anyone in golf noticed the terraces had already found the wardrobe. This is the same shape, a room instead of an outfit.
There’s a bigger number underneath all of this worth stating plainly. Around 136 million people worldwide already watch, read or follow golf in some form. Most of them still do it alone. That gap, a genuinely huge audience with nowhere shared to put its attention, is the whole thesis here. This isn’t a niche fix for a small crowd. It’s an opportunity sitting inside an audience that size, waiting for more rooms to open, and just as importantly, waiting to be told they exist.
Your own room
Golf doesn’t start on the first tee anymore, not for a growing number of people. It starts somewhere like the place I stumbled into by accident. The room comes first, and the round follows.
If you’ve felt this, a room full of people who all reacted at once, you already know the feeling this piece is trying to describe. I’d like to hear where it happened for you. Drop a comment and tell me the place, the format, the moment. Someone reading this has never had that feeling watching golf and doesn’t know it’s already out there.
Sources: 2025 Masters final round viewership from CBS and Nielsen. Off-course participation data from the R&A’s 2025 Global Participation Report and the National Golf Foundation, including its Topgolf-specific visitor study. Global golf audience figure of 136 million as used in Room 19’s Issue 007 carousel.
Image Credits: Pitch Golf London
Previously in Room 19:
Issue 004 | The Invisible Barrier, on the fear of being watched as a beginner
Issue 005 | The Timeless Walk, on reconnecting with a drifted friend through golf
Issue 006 | The ReRun, on golf’s fashion moment and its 1977 football-terrace origins
I started Room 19 because I wanted golf writing that treated the game the way the culture magazines I actually read treat everything else, properly, not as tips, gear reviews and fomo shots of golf courses. If you want the next one first, subscribe below.
Paul is the founding editor of Room 19, a golf brand telling the untold stories of the game for people who found it through culture, not the clubhouse. He took up golf at 37. Find Room 19 on Instagram and TikTok.
Quick answers
How many people watched the 2025 Masters final round? 13,995,000 on CBS, golf’s biggest TV audience in 11 years, peaking above 20 million during the playoff (CBS/Nielsen).
How many people already engage with golf off-course? Close to 90 million worldwide, combining the R&A’s count of 68.3 million off-course players outside the US and Mexico with the National Golf Foundation’s count of 19 million Americans who play exclusively off-course. Off-course participation grew roughly 10% year over year from 2023 to 2024.
Are off-course visitors actually likely to take up golf properly? In an NGF study of Topgolf visitors specifically, three in four non-golfers said they’d be interested in playing a real course afterward.
Where can I watch golf with other people? Golf Clubber’s events, Pitch Golf’s bars across Canary Wharf, Soho and Bishopsgate, The Golf Rooms in London, The Golf Bar in Glasgow, The Bunker in the Midlands, The Golf Lounge in Glasgow, Topgolf, and V Golf in Brighton are all real, current examples.
How big is golf’s total audience worldwide? Around 136 million people watch, read or follow golf worldwide. Most of that audience still experiences it alone.