The Pellucid Perspective - January 2020 - 7

INDUSTRY
TRENDS

Golf 20/20:
Are We There Yet?
By Jim Koppenhaver

was first introduced the Golf 20/20 initiative in the summer of
2000, ironically, by Joe Beditz of the NGF (we'll come back to
that...). Sitting in a room with the industry power-brokers at
the time (Tim Finchem, Jim Awtry, David Faye, Wally Uihlein,
David Pillsbury, Jim Baugh for those of you who lived through
that era) we were debating the growth metrics, the baseline figures
and reasonable targets. Comically now, I never really stopped and
thought back then that I might still be in this industry let alone be
in a unique position 20 years hence to deliver the report card on
the initiative, for better or worse. But here we are collectively as an
industry and, much to NGF's and others' chagrin, here I still am.
Time and space won't accommodate a full accounting of the
thinking and discussion but where we are today is a result of some
of those initial conversations so I'll provide the Cliff Notes of what
I recall relatively vividly. The Research Committee (folks who had
knowledge of reporting and analysis and/or existing assets to bring
to the party) was outlining to the Steering Committee (many of
aforementioned Executives) our point-of-view on data sources, Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs), metrics and potential collaboration. The Research committee consisted of Joe Beditz, Tom Stine,
someone from Golf Digest (they actually had a fairly extensive research department at the time), someone from NGCOA and Ruffin Beckwith from the PGA TOUR who was tasked with managing our unruly little band. Why was I there you might ask? I was
there because Pellucid at that time was doing some collaborative
development around participation and rounds "demand modeling"
with NGF and Joe brought me along to offer me the opportunity
to do small project work the NGF didn't want to do (i.e. I did and
presented a summary of the industry existing Player Development

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programs which was American Golf 's Nike Golf Learning Centers
and the NGCOA's Link Up to Golf ). I think it was in that first
"groupthink" session that most in the industry concluded that I ask
too many questions and have this nagging habit of asking, "How do
we know that?" when someone states their opinion masquerading
as a fact.
So the conversation eventually circles around to what the targets ought to be for participation and rounds. On participation,
the NGF at the time had the definitive (read "only") view on participants through their annual consumer mail survey. Those figures
showed the golfer base (age 7+, played 1+ rounds past year, a round
being any authorized start on a golf course) somewhere between
30-35M. That number had been steadily rising through the 90s
so the initial thinking was to just straightline the growth trajectory.
Inconveniently, that didn't yield a high enough target for all the
hype that was going to be placed behind Golf 20/20 so the eventual
thinking was that if you could "juice" both ends of the funnel equation (i.e. we had a pretty healthy churn ratio back then although
no one seemed to be able to consistently track or document it), you
could get to some BHAG (Big, hairy, audacious goal) worthy of
the 20/20 promise. I'd have to go back to my notes but I recall it
was something like churn at the time was 2.5M in, 2.0M out so
the reckoning was that if we could bump 2.5M to 3.0M annually
in the top of the funnel and squeeze the bottom of the funnel from
2.0 to 1.5M, then you get a net gain in acceleration of 1M golfers/
yr times 20 years and, voila!, 50M+ golfers by 2020 (which then got
morphed into 55M somewhere along the line but what's 5M golfers among friends?).
The rounds discussion was even more curious and comical. First
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The Pellucid Perspective - January 2020

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