Hello golf stakeholders:
We now have 4 months “in the books” and, while the results have been choppy by month and across geographies, all-in-all it’s a solid start to Year 2 of endemic COVID for golf. From our daily interaction with multiple industry stakeholders the primary question on everyone’s mind is, “Have we reached peak, post-pandemic golf or can it go higher yet?”
Those who solely report on and follow rounds would have to say “yes” because we did ~515M facility-reported rounds in ’21 followed by ~500M in ’22. Pellucid however, in our ’22 State of the Industry, quantified our case that Utilization (organic demand for golf) actually rose in ’22 due to unfavorable national weather impact so ’21 wasn’t the weather-neutral apex of demand in this cycle. That means for ’23 all eyes will be upon weather impact and Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay directs his attention this month at 10 key markets and how weather has performed for the first 4 months of the year and what the critical next two months will hold using our Foresight Capacity Rounds forecasting tool. Spoiler alert, it’s directionally optimistic.
In a rare double feature of optimism for the Pellucid crew, Publisher Jim K. previews the recently-fielded ’22 golf consumer base survey conducted in cooperation with the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) which shows the participant base (reality golf only, not virtual) increased for the 3rd consecutive year, this time by ~900K participants (defined as 1+ rounds played at a golf course during the calendar year). While the complete results and details of shifts by gender, age, income, involvement, annual churn ratio and first-time participant counts won’t be available until the end of the month in the May Outside the Ropes (available to subscribers), his article “teases” some of the more interesting changes in the size and shape of our consumer base during ’22.
See below for the headlines to each of our recurring sections from the regional April weather impact map to Comings & Goings (always entertaining commentary). We’ve already compiled the April rounds “preview”, courtesy of our GMRC subscribers, and it suggests that we’ll hold Utilization which would be remarkable given the >10% gain in Golf Playable Hours (GPH) nationally reported in this issue. If you want to know those numbers on a regular basis, you can either participate in GMRC (course operators) or sign up for a Publications Membership (everyone else).
