Golf clubs across the world have been warned that the sport could fall into crisis unless they lighten up a little, relax strict dress codes and withdraw bans on tweeting, snapchatting and booze on the fairway.

The game, first played in 15th-century Scotland, isn’t known for keeping pace with changes in wider society (Scotland’s famous Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews only admitted its first female members last year; Augusta, home to the Masters tournament, opened to women members in 2012), but experts say it has to act now to embrace millennials.

Consultants hired by the sport’s various governing bodies say golf clubs’ stuffy attitudes as well as the high cost of game – on wallets and time – have contributed to a roughly 10 million reduction in the number of players globally since before the financial crisis.

Steve Mona, chief executive of the World Golf Foundation, said clubs have to urgently adapt to the demands of younger people to ensure the sport has a future, as decisions by the world’s two biggest sports brands – Nike and Adidas – to pull out of golf equipment raised fears about the sport’s long-term future.

“The headlines ‘golf in crisis’ are overblown. We have a healthy number of core golfers,” Mona said. “But we do need to attract new and younger players. Each year about 500,000 leave the game because of death or the physical inability to play, and so every year we have to replace them.”

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