The Pellucid Perspective - July 2017 - 5

GOLF INDUSTRY
LEADERSHIP

Are we in this together?
By Stuart Lindsay

W

hen we talked about "governing bodies" last month
and referenced Jon Last's Sports and Leisure Research
Group's latest survey, the survey indicated that 69%
of the respondents thought the "governing bodies" in golf were
on the wrong track. That begs an interesting question: why is
"governing bodies" plural?
The cynic in me would speculate that Jon phrased the question to eliminate singling out the USGA, which has been the
R&A annointed arbiter of Golf Rules in the US since 1894.
The reality is that a lot of golfers don't understand the multiple
functions of the USGA and think that the PGA of America
and the PGA Tour have something to do with governing golf.
This would make Jon a good survey creator who understands
the common misperceptions among his sample of known golfers. We would love to see follow up questions that would confirm this lack of understanding, but we know it exists (see Rule
1 at right).
There are a lot more questions that industry insiders implicitly understand, but
we mistakenly assume golfers have that
same level of understanding. We know
that the USGA is the source for Slope
Ratings and that each hole is handicapped
for use in match play, but we would pose
the question as to how many of the estimated 16 million golfers without handicaps understand this or care.
We also need to acknowledge that
golfers generally lump tee time spacings, dress codes, etiquette and cart traffic
rules into an overarching concept of the
"Rules." In reality, this helps expand the
perception of multiple governing bodies
to include PGA professionals, owners,
managers and Boards of Directors. The
net result is that there is plenty of blame
to go around when golfers tell us we're on
the wrong track.
Over the last 18 months, we have witnessed several attempts
by some of these "governing bodies" to cooperatively create programs designed to reverse the drop in golf participation over the
last decade. Just when you think some of the major golf industry
players are going to really try and work together; things come
out that make you wonder if that can ever happen. I know that
my editor, Jim Dunlap, is going to write about the current state
of the PGA of America's relationship with Golf Datatech, but
I don't know how it's going to read. My blind assessment is that
the elimination of rounds reporting participation encouragement from the PGA is bad news for those of us who try to keep
track of the state of the golf industry. Golf Datatech has been

www.PellucidCorp.com

the only consistent provider of "rounds played" guidance for the
past 20 years and has basically provided that data to the entire
industry for free.
Unfortunately, it also looks like the joint effort of the NGCOA and PGA of America to revive a benchmarking service
to replace the PGA's Performance Trak has been either put on a
back burner or worse. I don't know if this is related to the Golf
Datatech issue above, but an industry that can't figure out some
basic performance barometers for its stakeholders is going to
have problems down the road, whether it's evaluating the effectiveness of grow the game initiatives or simply the comparative
performance of golf course management.
As we've written before, it doesn't appear that the golf industry wants to "handle the truth." Nobody wants to find out they
are in the bottom of their class and nobody wants to accept that
notion that we have collectively failed to keep golf as relevant as

it appeared to be 20 years ago.
On the other hand, there are golf courses that are being successfully run that you would think want to know they are performing well. For those who don't think there will be a day of
reckoning, the recent sale of ClubCorp for essentially the value
of their long term indebtedness and $700 million less than the
2006 acquisition price should be another wake up call, and you
can only hit the snooze button so many times. The successful
courses of today have a better chance of a prosperous post-reckoning future, but they need to be able to determine their relative
level of current success.
Any prosperous post-reckoning future will also require truly
cooperative efforts from the various "governing bodies." When
The Pellucid Perspective

5
http://www.PellucidcorP.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - July 2017
