The results of our second annual Golf Inc. State of the Industry survey were interesting – depressing, but interesting.
The inconsistencies noted in my last column when industry executives are interviewed on the record – “We’re doing OK, but all our competitors are in the toilet” – those disappear when the survey responses are anonymous. Well, maybe they don’t completely disappear. Witness the fact that 44 percent of owners or managers surveyed characterize business prospects for their facility as “good” to “excellent” in the coming year, but only 18 percent of them predict those same results for the golf industry overall next year.
Much as we’d like to attribute that first person optimism to the fact that Golf Inc. readers are just plain smarter operators than the rest of the industry’s uninformed souls, I suspect it has more to do with the fact that if you have what it takes to own or run a golf course, you probably have the confidence to believe you can do it better than your competition.
I won’t reiterate the whole survey – you can follow that starting Monday on this site, and should. Regardless of discrepancies in prognostication for our respondents’ facilities vs. those of others, the overall industry forecast is fair to partly cloudy and getting cloudier near term. That’s kind of sad, particularly because I’ve always felt golfers were inherently optimists. Why else would we expect our next 4-iron to end up stiff when the last 15 have ended up in the woods/pond/trap/OB?
One good idea
It may be shameless self-promotion, but it seems to me that in tough times like these, when everyone is looking for answers, an opportunity like our Golf Inc. Conference coming up Sept. 14-16 at La Quinta Resort & Club is an ideal place to look. Whether you’re looking for the latest in ways to get your marketing message out to potential players or members, strategies for filling your tee sheet, or even ways to buy or sell a golf course, the conference is a golden opportunity to spend quality time with and learn from people who know how to do all those things.
Over the years, many of our regular attendees have told me, “If I come home with one good idea that works for my club, it’s more than worth it. I usually do, so that’s why I keep coming back.” Just a thought, and the sooner you sign up, the bigger bargain it is.
Musings from the rough
Interesting irony at the U.S. Womens Open this year. After a cabal of top players reportedly submitted a letter asking for Commissioner Carolyn Bivens’ resignation, they got just that the day after the tournament. Given the number of tournaments and sponsors the LPGA Tour has lost in the last year, whether that was Bivens’ fault or not, her demise was not unexpected.
The irony is that one of Bivens’ ill-fated public relations ploys, her dictate that all Tour regulars must learn English, inadvertently took center stage when winner Eun Hee Ji of South Korea won with a clutch birdie on the 18th hole and then had to tell the American golf fans how she did it through an interpreter. The next two finishers were Candie Kyung (Taiwan) and In-Kyung Kim (South Korea).
Bivens’ letter requiring at least an attempt to learn English was heavy-handed and incredibly naïve on her part in this p.c. era, but there is little denying that the proliferation of talented and driven South Korean women is not the best thing that could have happened to the LPGA Tour in these economic times. Hopefully it doesn’t reflect an anti-Asian bias, but rather a preference by American golf fans to hear from players first-hand in a language Americans can understand.
Once in a while is OK – nobody complains that Angel Cabrera chooses not to speak English when he shows up and heads back to Argentina and the European Tour with the occasional major championship trophy. But the South Korean women are so good, and there are so many of them on the Tour, that there is no denying it is a bit of a marketing challenge for the LPGA.
But as long as Americans aren’t required to speak Arabic on their forays into Dubai or, God forbid, drink warm beer during trips to the British Open, it’s probably not going to fly to post “English only” signs at the trophy presentation on the 18th green.
… Our managing editor, Keith Carter, happened to catch a replay of an old Shell Wonderful World of Golf production featuring a 1963 match between a very youthful Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead. The match was at Pebble Beach, and on TV at least, Keith reports that sparkling bastion of pristine golf looked like … a British Open course, or perhaps many courses in the U.S. a few years from now when there’s no water left to soak all 100-plus acres of the course and its surroundings, and no money – or support – for fertilizer and pesticides. The contemporary Nicklaus was on hand to comment on his recollections of the match and the differences in Pebble then and today, citing one of his downhill sand shots on the show that obligingly stopped on the slow, bumpy greens and saying, “That would have been off the green today.”
… Speaking of greens, I’ve never promoted a piece of equipment in these pages, print or electronic, but possibly that’s because none I’ve ever acquired has helped what passes for my game. As someone with a case of the yips that would make the Dalai Lama snap his putter, I figured I’d tried about everything. Then I tried the Medium Heavy version of the Heavy Putter by Boccieri Golf.
John Daly is using that putter now, and since I share a backswing and a couple of vices with John – fortunately not the golf attire, alimony or gambling bills – I figured it couldn’t hurt. Nobody’s called me the Boss of the Moss yet, except maybe after a couple of wayward tee shots, but my regulars no longer check to see if a flock of pigs has just flown over when I make a 4-footer. If your wrists are flippier than Peres Hilton’s, give the Heavy or Medium Heavy a try – if nothing else, it’s a lot harder to throw.
… Speaking of equipment, why, oh why, is the USGA so hell bent on making our game harder? U grooves, V grooves, deep grooves, shallow grooves, sharp grooves? Who cares? If someone comes up with irons featuring ROUND grooves that reduce shot dispersion, excavate the ball from foot-high rough and make it moonwalk on the green, good for them. Make ‘em a no-no on the pro Tours and top amateur events, but leave the rest of us alone. As usual, the Solheim family over at PING is right – if it makes the game easier for more people, and it still requires a player to make decent contact and execute the shot correctly, thereby enjoying spending four or five precious hours and some folding money for the privilege, the problem with that is … what? And don’t tell me you’re protecting the integrity of the game – John Q. Public, who is the only hope for keeping the game alive, doesn’t know, or care, about the so-called integrity of the game. He or she wants to play a game that’s fun, provides them an occasional opportunity to think they can actually play it decently, and provides some fresh air, social and friendly competition time.
As my friend Jim Koppenhaver at Pellucid Corp says, if I were king …
