The Pellucid Perspective - April 2018 - 4

GOLF
TECHNOLOGY

are also competing in this space with both residential and commercial products.
Way back in 2004, Pellucid and Edgehill did some extensive
indoor digital golf research during the initial simulator "boom."
This particular project was in Dallas and it was tough to find
comparable facilities at the time, but those that we did find were
generally in "short season" locations in Boston, New Hampshire,
Minnesota and Wisconsin. Interestingly, some of them appear
to be still operating, even though our guy in Dallas was struggling before he got lucky and was condemned to make room for
a road widening project that needed his good location next to the
Grapevine Mall. We also did some work in 2016 for two guys in
Minneapolis who wanted to install About Golf simulators in a
café environment, but obviously investors shared our opinion of
the projections and it didn't open.
I don't mean to downplay the growth and potential impact
of digital golf. The one operating website I found for a GolfZon
Café in Kitchener, ONT let me look at its entire tee sheet. Over
75% of its space is reserved for this coming Friday night and almost 90% for Saturday, April 15th. I should add, however, that
their tee sheet was well under 50% booked for the other days of
the week.
The growth and improvement of digital golf experiences will
probably turn out to be both a blessing and a curse. As many in
the industry try and capitalize on these new options, we run the

DIS COV ER

risk of creating golfers that never go beyond "digital." What will
that mean for new golfers the industry efforts create who never
transition to "real" golf and replace green grass golfers as they age
out of the mix? Even worse, what will happen if existing green
grass golfers migrate their time and money to the digital alternatives they are going to see on TV? With over 20 Million visitors
over the last 2 years and over 10 million of those between the
ages of 18 - 34 (NGF/TopGolf survey), the needle should be
moving up on Millenial golf participation. Since our National
Sporting Goods Association data surveys prior year activity, we
will be watching this year's results very closely.
As far as the "Café Concept" goes, we've been looking at it
over a long period of time and have yet to see widespread adoption in the US, the UK and Canada. There may be hundreds in
Korea, but courses are scarce there and about 8 times as expensive
to play as the average course in the US.
In the end, our observation is that this new digital technology has its greatest potential to transform and improve instruction and practice. These tools are excellent for giving immediate
and visual feedback in a format much better than simply a swing
video. We would encourage golf course (and range) operators and
golf instructors to figure out how to expose as many new and
existing golfers to these tools as possible. It may have been an
expensive lesson, but my instructor also sold me 5 MPH more
swing speed on the spot.
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The Pellucid PersPecTive

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2018

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - April 2018