Depending on your point of view, golf is either a leisurely day spent outdoors on the green, or a pointless waste of time.

Whichever camp you may belong to, the game of golf may be about to undergo a radical shake up.

To continue to grow the game of golf in the 21st century, some keynote speakers at last year's European Golf Business Conference, held in Amsterdam, believe there are currently three main barriers to golf participation: cost, difficulty and time.

Whilst the difficulty of the game and the cost associated with equipment are problems which cannot be easily resolved, the time issue is something which can be looked at. The easiest way to do this would be to cut the amount of holes on a golf course.

Ruffin Beckwith, a director of USA-based stakeholder initiative Golf20/20, suggested that: "We should look to promote nine-hole golf as a genuine experience, not as half of a golf experience. We should make golf less intimidating and encourage new golfers to play."

Learning golf from scratch can be a daunting and unrewarding task for beginners. Although some clearly have a natural ability in the sport, others may take time to get to grips with the techniques needed to progress.

Although some 'pitch-and-put' type courses offer golfers nine holes for a complete game, the traditional approach is for courses which have eighteen holes - quite a mammoth challenge for anyone new to the game.

If 9-hole courses became more common, it would surely draw in a larger crowd of new golfers who are not so put off by the time pressure of an eighteen-hole course.

It would also most probably result in some negative feedback from golf purists who believe that the game is best left alone.

Beckwith said that the golf industry was worth US$75 billion in 2005; "bigger than the film and recording industries combined."

Changing the approach to the duration or timing of sports games is not a new idea: when the 20/20 cricket leagues were introduced there was a noticeable rise in the sports' popularity.

The European Golf Course Owners Association represents more than 600 golf course owners in 17 European countries. Together with the National Golf Course Owners Association (NGCOA) of USA, the NGCOA of Canada and Asian owners, the EGCOA is part of the world alliance of golf course owners which represents around 7,000 golf courses worldwide.

The article Filling up the Fairways originally appeared on 999 Today