The Pellucid Perspective - December 2020 - 4

COVID OPERATIONS
IMPACT

For the golf course operators in Milwaukee; the question is
whether this rounds increase is sustainable, or just a flash in the
pandemic? Based on the long term decline in both golfers and
rounds, combined with the poor Supply Dilution ratio; it is far
more likely that the 2020 rounds gains are temporary. The operators will have to work harder to keep the golfers that generated
these bonus rounds this year.
Not all DMAs face the same challenges as my hometown. As
I looked at the sheer volume of DMA data we have assembled,
I zeroed in on a metric that Jim K uses in his market analysis
section in his Pellucid Perspective monthly column - Golfers
per Eighteen Hole Equivalent. The numbers range from a low of
225/EHE in Palm Springs to a high of 4,678/EHE in Gainesville, FL. There are only 18 DMAs out of the 210 (9%) that have
more than 2,000/EHE. It should be noted, however, that those
18 DMAs represent 18% of the Rounds, 28% of the golfers and
15% of the courses in the US.
We then looked at " Velocity " - the metric Jim created representing " Rounds/EHE " . Sixteen of those eighteen selected
DMAs had Velocity indices over 100 as compared to the US
average. Only Chicago (84) and Houston (96) were below 100.
Course Utilization %s were also good - 11 of 18 had CU% indices above 100 with only Houston (84) below 90. To state the
obvious, this data suggests that the more Golfers/EHE you have,
the healthier the market. But a closer look raises more questions
- if you paid attention above, 28% of the golfers played only 18%
of the rounds so the average rounds/golfer were only 12.4/year
vs. the national average of 19.2/year. For example, Minneapolis
ranks 96th in Golfers/EHE, but has a CU% of almost 60% well above the national average, which most likely means those
golfers play at higher annual frequency than those in the Top 18.
In the end, the relative health of your market is important
because it determines the cumulative rounds demand; however,
how your course performs relative to your market is what really
matters. Our objective in gathering this data is to make it much
easier for an operator to measure how they are doing. The Pellucid GLMA allocates courses into 5 segments - Private, Public

4 The Pellucid Perspective

Premium/Value/Price and Learning & Practice. Unlike others
in the industry that use national pricing, Pellucid's segments
are based on prices for each DMA. For example, a $65 greens
fee in Chicago is in the Public Premium segment whereas that
rate would be Public Value in Phoenix. There are average round
counts for every segment in all 210 DMAs.
Each golf course in the IGDB directory has been assigned to
its appropriate DMA and given a price segment based on that
assignment. Each course has also been assigned to its closest US
Official Weather Reporting Station with access to our Cognilogic weather server.
All a golf course will have to do is enter their rounds, and the
website will calculate how they performed vs. their DMA average for both Rounds and CU%. It is anticipated that a course
will be able to put in rounds for 2 previous years plus the current
year if they want to measure year to year performance.
We used our 2020 splendid isolation to assemble the most
comprehensive set of golf course data we have ever created. It is
our goal to make meaningful and affordable Rounds and Course
Utilization benchmarking available for the first time for every
course in the US.
More information on this capability and resource for '21 is
outlined in the Open Letter to the Golf Industry article later
in this issue. After understanding the proposition, if you'd like
to sample and participate in this groundbreaking project please
contact Stuart Lindsay, edgehillgolf@msn.com or Jim Koppenhaver, jim@pellucidcorp.com
n

Our objective in gathering this
data is to make it much easier
for an operator to measure
how they are doing.

PHOTO BY SFIO CRACHO / SHUTTERSTOCK

- higher than the national ratio of -24%. But there is a ray of
hope - with about 97% of the season complete through October,
rounds are up 16.4% in 2020.

December 2020

The Pellucid Perspective - December 2020

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