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After several years of the economy being in a funk and the golf business struggling, you take good news where you can find it.
So when the Colorado public course rounds and revenue survey conducted by the CGA showed a bit of an uptick for the first eight months of the year, it was a welcome — albeit small — respite from longer-term trends that golf is trying to reverse.
The data from Jan. 1 through Aug. 31, collected from more than 60 public courses primarily along the Front Range, show that taken collectively, the number of rounds was up 2.2 percent compared to the same period in 2010, while green fee revenue increased 1.4 percent.
“I attribute it to an increased inventory of golf days” due to better weather early in the year, CGA executive director Ed Mate said. “But anything in the black is a good thing. And maybe it’s a sign of things to come.”
If so, it would be a welcome change of pace from recent years. The final rounds and revenue report, including numbers for all of 2011, won’t be complete for several months. But the full-year report for 2010 showed that rounds were down 2.3 percent from 2009, while green fee revenue per round was up slightly.
“I don’t have a great outlook (for a major turnaround), but the fact that rounds are up a little is promising,” CWGA executive director Robin Jervey said. “Some of it hinges on weather, but hopefully some of it is based on the economy getting a little better.”
Of course, while the numbers are generally positive, those are just averages. There are still some facilities that experienced double-digit percentage drops in both rounds and green fee revenue.
“Some areas took longer to come out of the (winter) weather, conditions-wise,” said Colorado PGA executive director Eddie Ainsworth. “I’ve heard everything from ‘we’ve had a terrible year’ to ‘we had one of our best years’. Nothing surprises me based on the economy and what’s going on. I’m just thankful the report numbers aren’t any worse than they are.”
Indeed, given that the National Golf Foundation estimates that the number of golfers in the U.S. has dropped from 30 million in 2005 to 26.1 million in 2010, those in the golf business appear to have their work cut out for them. That’s one of the reasons the Colorado PGA, CGA, CWGA and other members of the state’s allied golf associations are getting together for a Colorado Golf Summit on Monday (Nov. 7). The hope is that by sharing ideas that have worked for individual facilities, the game will have its best chance to succeed over the long haul.
As for how things look for the more immediate future, it depends on who you’re asking.
Including par-3 courses as separate entities, 38 facilities reported in the rounds and revenue survey that rounds increased from the first eight months of 2010 to the same period this year, while 31 said the numbers were down. And of those that provided green fee revenue figures for both years, 36 facilities noted better numbers for the first two-thirds of this year than in 2010, while 23 said intake was down this year.
“Weather is a huge factor in the survey,” Mate noted.
And considering the fall of 2010 was better than normal, weather-wise, the final comparison of this year’s numbers vs. last year’s may tell a different story than the report for the first eight months did.
Generally speaking, the reports for January through August of this year were fairly positive in the Denver metro area and along the northern Front Range, while the few reports received from southern Colorado show business dropped in the majority of cases there.
Among all the respondees, nine courses (all in the metro Denver region) said that rounds were up by double-digit percentages, while six were down by double digits. In green fee revenue, three facilities were up by more than 10 percent, while four dropped more than 10 percent from 2010 to 2011.
Courses participated in the survey with the understanding that information for specific facilities would not be made public.
