Why Three of Four Beginners Quit

Nineteen million Americans have tried golf since 2020. About one in four of them stayed.

In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Matthew Reagan, PGA (co-founder and general manager of Operation 36) to talk about why golf keeps losing the beginners it works so hard to attract — and what changed the day he stopped teaching the swing first and started people 25 yards from the hole.

The conversation dives into:

The year-four gut punch: a junior program running at 95% retention that still lost forty golfers, and the single thing the kids who stayed all had in commonA year of three-hour nine-hole rounds, a drive to Pinehurst, and the flip that turned into Operation 36 — start at 25 yards, shoot 36, back upWhy the environment around a beginner matters more than the technical ability of the coach, and what that says about how golf picks its heroesThe women who told him they had always wanted to play but had never been given permission to start that close to the greenOpening the app to everyone in 2027 — couch to course, course to coach — and what an app should refuse to pretend it can replaceConnect with our guests

⛳ Matthew Reagan, PGA — co-founder and general manager, Operation 36 — 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-reagan-op36/

📱 Operation 36 — https://operation36.golf — how it works: https://operation36.golf/how-it-works/

🐦 X/Twitter: https://x.com/op36golf — 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/operation_36/ — 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/operation-36-golf — 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/op36golf/

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