The Pellucid Perspective - June 2013 - (Page 17)

THE LAST WORD Shock waves from the home of the Magic Kingdom T he cheers and groans in the break rooms of course management company headquarters or the lounge at the local golf course last week were likely due to the adventures of Tiger, Phil, Rory and company at Merion, but the mumbles around the water cooler or behind executive doors were likely due to rumblings out of Orlando. As many if not most of our faithful readers have heard by now, GolfNow has purchased the major tee time booking engine and POS software provider, FORE! Reservations. Already the industry’s largest third party tee time marketing company, Orlando-based GolfNow has reportedly also dipped into the seemingly bottomless stash of Comcast and NBC Sports cash to purchase BRS Golf, the largest tee time booking engine and online sales company in Ireland and Great Britain. Now, most of you know this is a story we would normally be all over, with both the gist of the transaction(s) and our take on the ramifications for the golf industry at large. There is more to the story, apparently, so we have opted to wait until the full picture becomes clear before weighing in with our thoughts. A number of FORE! Reservations customers, however, many of whom have stood shoulder to shoulder with FORE! founder Harry Ipema in the battle against barter payments for third party tee time sales in general and GolfNow’s dominance of that market specifically, have barraged Ipema’s email box and voicemail with objections to the sale. “How could you sell us out, and to THOSE guys?” is apparently the general refrain. While we can understand their dismay, particularly in view of Ipema’s longstanding and vocal opposition to the tee time barter system that is GolfNow’s bread and butter, can anyone really say they’d have done differently if they were Ipema? It’s certainly not as if he hasn’t paid his industry dues. Starting from scratch more than 20 years ago, and www.PellucidCorp.com generating much of the business himself, he developed a current customer base of more than 2,000 courses. In addition to FORE!’s technological capabilities, Ipema’s success was based on demonstrating to course owners and operators that they were his primary customers, not the golfing public, and their success was job one. Ipema’s long struggle to build FORE!’s business to its present level can’t have been easy, but it’s also likely that looking into the golf industry’s immediate future to see what it might take to maintain or grow that business may not have been Most small business owners and entrepreneurs will admit that their long term goal is to nurture a business that will provide a decent living for themselves and others to a certain point, at which time a buyer will come along and make the struggle all worthwhile with a big payday. promising. Most small business owners and entrepreneurs will admit that their long term goal is to nurture a business that will provide a decent living for themselves and others to a certain point, at which time a buyer will come along and make the struggle all worthwhile with a big payday. It is likely that GolfNow, which has both a need for the tee time booking engine and POS software that FORE! possesses and the resources to leverage both, simply made Ipema an offer he could - but decided not to - re- fuse. And, in the final analysis, who can blame him, not that some won’t try. Anchors now aweigh, ball next? Many industry pundits have bowed down to the USGA and R&A dictate banning the anchored putting stroke as of 2016, although it remains to be seen whether the PGA Tour and some of its lawyered-up members like Tim Clark and Adam Scott, the PGA of America and, for that matter, golfers at private clubs and the local muni, will obey the ban. Assuming that particular controversy turns out be more of a ripple than a tempest in golf ’s teacup, this year’s U.S. Open at historic but PGA Tour pitch & putt length Merion may turn out to have officially launched the next big regulatory campaign. If metal woods, fiberglass and composite shafts, launch pad club faces and the anchored stroke with a long putter aren’t making a mockery of the grand old courses and the game itself, it must be the ball. This column is being written before the results are in at Merion, so I have no idea how the professional maulers fared against the ultra-rare sub-7,000 yard Merion layout. Obviously the USGA will pinch the fairways in to a degree where a second mower would be irrelevant, the rough will be doused with Miracle-Gro and pins will be in hideouts the Taliban would envy, but the possibility exists that today’s pros will simply boom fairway wood or hybrid lasers 300 yards onto the few blades of short grass, find the tucked pins with their wedges and set former Merion Open winner Hogan to spinning in his grave. If that happens, the long knives in Far Hills and St. Andrews will come out, and we’ll see if “traditionalists” like Wally Uihlein at Titleist feel the same way about a ball velocity rollback as they did about an anchored stroke ban. As Arte Johnson on Laugh-In used to say, it will be “verry interesting.” —Jim Dunlap The Pellucid PersPecTive 17 http://WWW.PELLUCIDCORP.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - June 2013

The Pellucid Perspective - June 2013
Contents
Golf ’s Consumer “Leaky Bucket” Challenge
So you want to buy a golf course?
Are you on the clock?
IRI, R.I.P.
May golf weather impact: Down, but pace of decline slowed
In theory, operators sing “I Love LA”
ClubCorp buys Oak Tree CC in Oklahoma
Shock waves from the home of the Magic Kingdom

The Pellucid Perspective - June 2013