Dear Golf Industry Professional:
The excitement and anticipation (and hype) of the US Open is upon us as the world treks to another off-the-beaten path location for some great golf and hopefully no USGA rules fiascos in the ’17 edition. Away from the spotlight and frenzy to sell eyeballs for the weekend, let’s see how regular golfers have been voting with their feet through May and check in on the more mundane (but significantly larger) operations side of golf.
While Erin Hills is a public facility, it’s not municipal golf, which is our headline story for this month as Publisher Jim Koppenhaver relates a recent proposal by a Chicago suburbs township to buy a failing privately-owned course, describing it as “a diamond in the rough.” Interestingly enough, for a township in Illinois to purchase land they have to take it to an open forum vote so the general populace and not the Township Board members got to “make the call” on this one. To find out the decision and what arguments carried the day, click here:
In addition, the June issue covers the following topics in our pursuit of monthly edutainment for our readers:
• Editor-in-Chief Jim Dunlap covers the gradual but steady rise of Forelinx, a new player to the online tee time engine game using points vs. prices for members to book times at participating courses. Two enterprising industry participants (one a GolfNow alum) who share a never-barter passion are trying to make a new system work around the trifecta of being consumer-friendly, course-beneficial and, importantly, economically viable as a long-term business model.
• Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay shares his opus on where the Rules of Golf and our friends at the USGA are going after over a year of thought and observing the ups and downs of competitive rulings, handicaps and how real people are actually playing the game of golf (i.e. in smaller numbers and fewer rounds, any correlation?). Get a cup of coffee and prop your feet up, there’s lots to consider here between the “puts and calls.”
• Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including weather impact for the May month (gave back all of April’s gains, sigh) and Year-to-Date (back to about even after 5 of 12 “holes played”), April Utilization (down, favorable weather but rounds went south?), the March equipment sales figures (back to even but two different stories between On and Off Course), as well as Houston TX as this month’s Market Focus which registers as the 16th healthiest of the Top 25 US Golf Markets in our annual ranking.
We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; KemperSports, Troon Golf, Bayer CropScience and EZLinks Golf. We also cordially invite additional industry stakeholders who want to increase their brand exposure and be associated monthly with intelligent discussion on key issues to join our merry little band through our most popular 12-month sponsorship program (offered at an improved value relative to our entry-level six month sponsorship rate). Twelve-month sponsors also receive all Pellucid industry-standard reports (State of the Industry, Outside the Ropes, Monthly Weather Impact Tracking (Nat’l, Reg’l, Markets), Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard and National Golf Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard). Sponsorship provides monthly exposure to approximately 30K industry leaders and followers and associates your brand with Pellucid’s effort to expand intelligent thinking on today’s most challenging industry issues. For more “opportunistic” spenders, we might suggest one of our smaller-bite “Ad Partner” programs for those who may not be able to make a 6 or 12-month commitment (as short as 3 months are now available) or who may not need a half page or more exposure (quarter pages now available). If you’re interested in knowing more about sponsorship opportunities or are interested in a preview of our ad partner options, contact Editor-in-Chief Jim Dunlap (760-212-3714, jdgolfer@cox.net).
If you know of associates who would benefit from the topics and insights covered in this issue, feel free to forward this email and encourage them to register on the Pellucid website (http://www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist) to join the conversation, discussion and debate.
As always, you can review and order any of Pellucid’s range of reports and services at www.pellucidcorp.com. We also want to bring to your attention Pellucid’s recently- announced participation in the next generation golf course database, the Internet Golf Course Database (IGDB) with partners Apparation LLC, Never-Search and GolfCourseRanking.com. For more information on this comprehensive database, updated quarterly and refreshed completely every 12 months (all 15K+ US courses), contact jim@pellucidcorp.com. From the numbers and details of how our industry’s consumer base is changing at the national level to our individual facility-level services including weather impact (Cognilogic) and market analysis (Golf Local Market Analysis), we’ll keep you one step ahead of the competition in this continuing challenging industry landscape.
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