Count Occurences of text substring

This should be very easy but I keep getting a return of "0". This is for a small recreational golf league my mother coordinates - totally volunteer.

I have a small worksheet for golf tee times, the name of the golfer and the word (walk) or (ride) -
eg.

Column A Tee Time Column B John Smith (walk) Column C Tee Time Column D Dan Jones (ride)
10:00 John Smith (ride) 11:14 Dan Jones (walk)

There will usually be about 100 golfers who are constantly changing tee times and whether they will ride or walk. The only calculation in the worksheet is to do the following tallies -

Total # of golfers -
Total # riding -
Total # walking

I have tried countif, sumif, just plain count and I can't see what I am doing wrong.

You guys have been great help before with more complicated stuff so I'm hoping this will be obvious.

Thanks very much in advance
Dawn

Thank you everyone! I used your suggestions first Tony and they worked perfectly. I don't know what I was doing but you saved me a lot more frustration.

Dawn