Greetings golf stakeholders:
The world officially got “wacky” last week as the vast majority of professional sports got put on pause and The Masters was officially “postponed” (not sure what that means, the rest of the golf dance card for the season is already spoken for so it’s either going to be a post-FedEx Cup event or “step on” some other tournament). Our crystal ball on what the PGA TOUR season will look like is cloudy but, fortunately, our weather forecast is more clear and quantifiable with a new capability to estimate Golf Playable Hours (GPH) and Capacity Rounds (CR) being launched this month. Publisher Jim K. gives you the details and some pictures on what the 60 day Capacity Rounds and weather variables output looks like at facility level as well as new maps illustrating what the balance of the year by month looks like in pictures for temperature, precipitation and GPH.
For the full story, click here: March Perspective
In addition, our March narrative leans a little less quantitative with humorous observations on history and the obligatory look at how COVID-19 might impact our industry:
• Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay looks at the recent laments and rants by Brooks Koepka (golf’s too stuffy) and Paige Spiranac (golf’s too sexist). He goes back through the history of the sport to outline that these claims are neither new nor unique and observes, not surprisingly, that your view on the industry depends greatly where you sit and what “interest group” you belong to.
• Contributing Writer Harvey Silverman takes on the topic of Golf and Corona (not the beer) with his view on the “puts and calls” of how this plays out in a moderate severity scenario (not saying that we know how severe it’s going to be, we’re just taking the middle lane in the road).
• Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the February weather impact results (up!) and January YtD Utilization (down but due to positive rounds “comps” trailing more positive weather). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours and Utilization while our Market Focus spotlight of the Top 25 US Golf Markets falls on Dallas, TX the 11th healthiest market by our proprietary, multi-dimensional scorecard. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 15 activities during the past month with transactions being the majority (10) highlighted by Century Golf/Hankuk’s purchase of 7 courses in the Palm Springs market (PGA West and LaQuinta resorts-affiliated courses).
• As a reminder, Pellucid’s ’19 State of the Industry presentation is available in the wake of our multiple presentations in Orlando. You can get the presentation slides and access to the recorded presentation now and the commentary report by Stuart (with the December rounds charts updated) will be available to the SoI Suite purchasers by the end of this month. To see the purchase options from $100-$495 click here
We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; Troon Golf and KemperSports as well as welcome our newest sponsor, Golf Business Solutions (a continuance of the EZLinks/TeeOff.com sponsorship). For all those service providers and suppliers to the golf industry out there with the latest-and-greatest to offer to the industry thought-leaders who read our monthly publication, might we suggest considering joining 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, National Golf Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard and US Golf Supply on Sale report). 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 our ad partner options, contact Publisher Jim Koppenhaver (847.808.7651, jim@pellucidcorp.com).
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 (www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist) to join the conversation, discussion and debate.
We also continue to spread the word on Pellucid’s next-generation golf course database, the Internet Golf Course Database (IGDB) with partners Apparation LLC, Never-Search and GolfCourseRanking.com which now offers annual subscriptions for <$2.5K (that’s a compelling value!). IGDB now powers Pellucid’s Golf Local Market Analyzer and has added functionality to our project work like being able to tally and profile course closures within key US markets over time. For more information on our comprehensive database, updated quarterly and refreshed completely every 9 months (all 15K+ US courses), email support@theigdb.com.