The Pellucid Perspective - April 2018 - 9

INDUSTRY
SCORECARD

March golf weather impact: Forgettable month, dismal quarter

ritics often accuse me of unnecessary hyperbole but this
month's headline won't qualify after you see the numbers.
March weather results significantly lagged last year's results, registering -17% at the national level vs. Year Ago (YA).
Interestingly, that once again resulted in an improvement in the
ugly January-February results, bringing the Year-to-Date (YtD)
deficit "up" to the level of -20%. In regional breadth for the
YtD period, it swung to a slightly unfavorable distribution of
1:2, with 7 weather-favorable regions countered by 11 weatherunfavorable regions (1 in-season region was in the neutral zone
of +/- 2% with the remaining 26 regions being out-of-season by
Pellucid's rules for Golf Playable Hours). Looking at weather

March YtD 2018
Month Capacity Rds, % Change vs. YA .................... -17%
YtD Capacity Rds, % Chng vs. YA ............................ -20%
YtD Up/Down Breadth Ratio .......................................1:2
# of Regions Up........................................................ 7
# of Regions Down.................................................. 11
YtD % Utilization Rate (Feb '18) ............................... 57%
YtD % Utilization Rate Pt. Chng vs. YA (Feb '18) .... +5 pts

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impact performance by day-of-week, the unfavorability skews
to weekdays but with both week-parts registering declines (Saturdays were actually up as the silver lining). The 1st quarter is
now in the books and it's an ugly start nationally from which
we'll have to claw our way back over the next 9 months. Pellucid subscribers will see that there was a material change in the
year-end forecast results and they also know how much March
underperformed the 10-year "norm." If you'd like to join them
in being in-the-know regarding those important details and
having early-warning guidance, subscribe to the monthly Geographic Weather Impact report or our Cognilogic facility-level
web-based information service by following the instructions
and links at the end of this article.
Played Rounds data for February published by Golf Datatech
again painted a bad news/good news picture when combined
with weather impact. On an absolute basis, Played Rounds for
the month registered -7% (was it our programming?), but that
handily beat Mother Nature's contribution in Available Rounds
which we previously reported as down by double-digits, producing a Utilization Rate jump for the 2nd consecutive month
(It wasn't programming!). For the YtD period we're registering Utilization gains driven by Played rounds down <10% and
Available rounds down >20%. True to the nature of math and
summarization, there are winners and losers in both Played
rounds and Utilization Rate among the 61 key Markets (including Pellucid's designated Top 25 markets) and this mosaic
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - April 2018