Are golfers more like bears or squirrels in their fall season behavior? We’ll see when the October rounds results are released because, if they’re squirrels, rounds played should be up more than 10% vs. year ago. Pellucid reports that Golf Playable Hours (GPH) for the month of October were up almost 25% compared to the same period last year. This benevolence by Mother Nature pulled the year-to-date (YTD) GPH results back to even (-0.3%) compared to 2006.
Encouragingly, the favorable climate results were broad-based as 13 of 24 regions for the month were up with 9 of those being up 10% or more. This resulted in moving the regional breadth ratio for the year into positive territory for the first time to 1.8:1 (9 regions with favorable GPH vs. 5 regions with unfavorable GPH and 10 in the neutral zone). Looking back to September and the recently-released rounds played numbers reported by Golf Datatech showed rounds for the month up almost 5% against Pellucid’s previously-reported GPH results which showed virtually no change compared to 2006. This is the continuation of a relatively positive yearlong trend of rounds demand being flat but doing so in a less favorable weather environment in 2007.
Pellucid President Jim Koppenhaver comments on the current results saying, "It will be interesting to see how golfers responded to a stellar October for golf playing conditions across much of the country. If they’re squirrels, they’ll have taken the opportunity to squeeze in a few more rounds and we should see rounds played up in double digits for the month. If they’re bears and already looking for a hibernation cave, we should see rounds up modestly in the 5% range or so. Looking back at the combination of flat weather and positive rounds in September, it’s ironic that industry organizations in announcing the rounds results attributed them to generally favorable weather when in fact the credit for that success should go to the owner/operators, not climate conditions."
More detail on the results from national to individual facility level can be obtained through combinations of Pellucid’s Weather Impact Analyses: The Regional Weather Impact Tracking report, the Facility 10-year Weather Impact Trend report, the Facility Annual Weather Impact Analysis and the Facility Monthly Weather Impact Tracking report.
Parties interested in understanding and quantifying what part of rounds and revenue performance is due to "controllable" vs. "uncontrollable" factors (i.e. course owners, lenders, buyers, sellers, equipment manufacturers, retailers and service providers) can find more information on Pellucid’s weather capabilities at www.pellucidcorp.com. For more specific information on the Regional Weather Impact Tracking report and to receive a free sample, interested parties should contact Jim Koppenhaver at jimk@pellucidcorp.com.
Contact:
Jim Koppenhaver, President, Pellucid Corp.
jimk@pellucidcorp.com
www.pellucidcorp.com
