As of last Sunday, President Trump has visited one of his golf courses 13 times since becoming president. He told official White House reporters that he held meetings at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va. “I’m going to be working for you; I’m not going to have time to go play golf,” Trump said last year. But White House spokesman Sean Spicer says the president negotiates outside of traditional environs. “How you use the game of golf is something that he has talked about,” Spicer said recently.

Other Americans, however, long ago abandoned the course as a place for doing business.

Lately, Steven Herz has noticed something different on the golf course: No one is there. “The courses are much less crowded,” he says. “It’s fascinating to me how open they are.” Herz, 50, who lives in Manhattan and is the president of talent agency IF Management, is a member of the golfing service Eligo, which allows him to access 80 private golf clubs in the U.S. and Europe without having to join one.

The meager attendance Herz has noticed isn’t limited to courses in the New York metro area. The entire U.S. golf industry has been experiencing slow growth in participation and club memberships for the past five years, according to data from industry research firm IBISWorld: From 2011 to 2016, golf course and country club revenue grew by little more than 1% annually.

And last September, Nike NKE, -1.12% announced that it was ceasing production of golf equipment, focusing instead on golf shoes and apparel. The reason for the transition is to pursue “sustainable profitable growth for Nike Golf,” said Nike brand president Trevor Edwards, in a statement.

Also between 2011 and 2016, nine-hole games and driving ranges have seen a spike in interest as family and work dynamics have changed, causing consumers to be willing to spend less time and money on leisure activities.

“With two-income families that share responsibilities, golf clubs are now a place where the entire family needs to have some kind of benefit,” says Steve Mona, chief executive of the World Golf Foundation (WGF), an organization that promotes the growth of the sport internationally.

In nearly half of U.S. families, both parents are fully employed, and of those families, nearly 40% of couples equally share the managing of their children’s schedules and about 60% share household chores equally, according to a Pew Research survey released in November 2015. In 1970, just 31% of families consisted of both parents working full time, while in 46% of families, the mother stayed at home, according to Pew.

Additionally, the proliferation of mobile devices in the workplace has blurred the line between work and leisure time — with the latter suffering, studies show. About two-thirds of U.S. workers owned smartphones in 2013, according to Pew, and the same amount reported working during their leisure and vacation times, according to Accenture. “There’s a lot of competition for people’s available leisure time,” says Nick Petrillo, an analyst at IBISWorld.

“We live in a 24/7 world,” says Gerald Celente, publisher of Kingston, N.Y.-based Trends Journal. “People are working longer and harder just to stay even. It’s a virtual world, and golf has no place in that world.”

In addition to its appeal as a leisure activity, playing golf used to be an integral part of climbing the corporate ladder, Celente says, but the practice has gone the way of the “three-martini lunch.” Younger workers have begun to move away from doing business on the golf course or at the steakhouse, instead bringing clients to faster-paced activities like CrossFit.

Recognizing these changing preferences, the golf industry is making changes to retain players and attract new ones. In 2014, the U.S. Golf Association introduced its Play9 campaign to encourage people to play shorter and more cost-effective games. The organization recorded a 13% year-over-year increase in nine-hole games played from 2014 to 2015 and an 11% year-over-year increase from 2015 to 2016, according to Dave Aznavorian, senior director of marketing at the USGA.

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“There’s something almost magical about a two-hour block of time,” Aznavorian says. “The more time an activity takes, the more challenging it is to attract participants.”

The R&A, which was formed out of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, is the Scotland-based governing body for golf in every country except the U.S. and Mexico. The organization held its first nine-hole championship on July 9 at the Royal Troon Golf Club in Scotland. The organization decided on the event after 60% of golfers reported that they would enjoy playing more if it took less time, according to an R&A survey of 56,000 players in 122 countries.

Courses are even changing their rules to make playing more appealing, relaxing dress codes and allowing music on the course, says WGF’s Mona. “If golf is going to compete against other forms of recreation, courses have to allow what people are used to doing,” Mona says.

Country clubs are also adding or revamping amenities to appeal to family members of all ages and the new joining member demographic of older millennials, says Frank Vain, president of McMahon Group, which provides consulting services to clubs. “Joining a club is a personal choice now,” Vain says, citing the cutbacks in corporate-sponsored memberships. “People tend to be asking for a bit more to get that value.”

In the early 2010s, golf participation among Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 was 9%, down from 14% in the early 1990s, according to data from the National Golf Foundation. Generation X — people born between 1965 and 1980 — makes up the largest proportion of golfers today, accounting for nearly 7 million of the 24.7 million golfers nationwide. However, millennials are more likely to take up golf after an increase in income, as the generation’s older cohort had higher participation rates than those between the ages of 24 and 29 who had mounting student loan and credit card debt, according to the NGF.

And choosing to take up golf is no small expense — the average annual cost of membership to a private golf club in the U.S. is about $6,245, not including initiation fees, according to Golf Digest. The cost of an 18-hole round at a daily-fee course can range from $15 to $150.

Retailers have taken note in the declining popularity of the sport as well. In August 2014, Dick’s Sporting Goods chief executive Ed Stack said in an earnings call that golf was the company’s “most challenging business,” adding that the company would cut down on hiring and store space devoted to the sport.

As more players defect from traditional golf courses, driving ranges and other nonmembership venues have seen higher growth rates. Driving ranges and “family fun” centers such as miniature golf courses and batting cages saw a revenue growth of more than 3% annually between 2011 and 2016, according to IBISWorld. The growth was attributed to “time-strapped individuals” looking for more convenient ways to play golf and other leisure activities, according to the report.

A driving range at Topgolf's Houston location Anthony Gomez/Topgolf

Topgolf, an indoor driving range chain that includes event spaces, food and drinks, had 8 million visitors in 2015 playing 23.3 million games, up from 2.3 million visitors and 7.8 million games in 2013. Topgolf has done well appealing to millennials and families, the WGF’s Mona says. “We’re encouraged by it because it’s getting people to try the game who normally wouldn’t have,” he says. Topgolf didn't respond to a request for comment.

With the initiatives to play shorter games and the growing popularity of alternative golfing venues, industry organizations hope to change the popular opinion of golf as a time-consuming and expensive activity. “We want people to see it as something you can do in a finite period of time, cost effectively,” Aznavorian says.

Other golfers aren’t as optimistic for the sport’s makeover. “Unless we see another transcendent figure come on the scene, golf is going to stay the same,” Herz says, referring to Tiger Woods, who was incredibly popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “People aren’t having three-martini lunches anymore and they’re not doing business on the golf course.”

(This story was updated on March, 29, 2017.)