The Pellucid Perspective - January 2020 - 8

INDUSTRY
TRENDS

question I asked was, "How many rounds were played in the US
in 2000?" Crickets. Eventually Joe B. chimes in with a number
somewhere north of 600M and I ask..."How do we know that?"
He says, "Last year's consumer survey." At this point in my career I
had about a decade of research behind me and I pointed out to the
group that consumer survey is generally not a good way to track
purchase or consumption behavior and my limited experience had
shown that respondents overwhelmingly over-report their behavior
with the exception of "sins" (OK, get your mind out of the gutter,
I mean beer consumption, smoking etc.). That leads to a (reluctant) conversation around potential ways to collect rounds through
transactions (what Stuart refers to as "through the turnstiles," in
Consumer Package Goods it's using store scanner data, in golf
it's getting it from the facilities vs. consumer survey). It turns out
that Tom Stine and Golf Datatech (GDt) had just the year before
launched and was wanting to expand rounds reporting from facilities and was willing to offer their services if the industry would help
GDt get more facilities to participate. In a strange twist of fate that
I never knew how it occurred or why, we end up several months later
with Golf 20/20 ignoring GDt's offer and the NGF and the NGCOA battling for who's going to count rounds. Eventually Dave
Pillsbury steps in on behalf of American Golf (back then the lion's
share player in managed courses so they got to play the role of King
Solomon in these types of disputes) and tells them to collaborate
and get on with it. While they're getting the new rounds tracking
up and running (vs. augmenting Tom's perfectly-acceptable existing collection and reporting system), Golf 20/20's getting pressure
to establish and publish their targets for participants and rounds
target so, somehow (I'm being honest, not sarcastic when I say I really don't recall) the figure of 1B rounds comes up which, from the
baseline of ~620M rounds (from Joe's consumer survey because we
don't have any facility counts yet), that's a Compound Growth Rate
of ~2.5% per annum. When the dust settles, the first year of facilityreported rounds yields a number of 518M "through the turnstile"
rounds for 2000 and a similar number for 2001 and we're off and
running. That creates two problems, one small and one large 1) Jim
was right in that the consumer survey was 10-20%+ too high (oops,
minor inconvenience) and 2) The 1B goal now represents a 3.3%
annual "lift" over 20 years (major problem). At that point Jim and
the industry part ways with Ruffin Beckwith's immortal defense
in the press when Pellucid repeatedly outlined the mathematical
improbability of Golf 20/20 even being able to see either of their

8 The Pellucid PersPecTive

two key goals, let alone achieve them by retorting, "Maybe they're
too aggressive, maybe they're not aggressive enough" (I still have the
article in my archives, hard copy).
Fast forward 20 years and the debate is now definitively ended as
illustrated in the below two graphs of the industry's performance in
participation and rounds demand (see charts above).
In the immortal words of Maxwell Smart, "Missed it by thaaat
much!" As much as many of the industry associations and power
brokers would like to believe that I have some interest in "dragging
the industry down," I would argue that it seems the industry is doing a good enough job of that on its own without my help. So....
rather than continuing to belabor the past, allow me to offer a few
suggestions on what I think went wrong and how we could regroup
if there's sincere interest out there among the captains of our industry and the associations which currently possess the vast majority of
the financial resources which will be required:
*

*

*

There needs to be a long-term funding plan/sources (minimum 10 yrs) for research, program development, program
execution and tracking; Golf 20/20 was never seriously
funded for anything beyond annual PR "sprints" and one
of the comical realizations for me during the closing session of one of the annual gatherings was that the people
on the stage who had the money (PGA TOUR in the
lead and entertainment-based associations) were instead
"passing the hat" among the audience who didn't have any
money (course owner/operators, equipment manufacturers
etc.)
You need realistic objectives, intermediate milestones,
independent tracking and some course-correction mechanism along the way against what is/isn't working. Selfreporting for the purpose of "message control" is great if
the objective is publishing a narrative that contributes to
some other, greater good (i.e. the PGA TOUR wanting
positive press prior to a TV contract negotiation when the
ratings were declining and valuations were "rich", just a
hypothetical example, ha, ha), but if you're actually trying
to "raise the tide" on participants and rounds to float many
more constituents' boats, forget about message control and
get the strategy and execution right
Get capable service providers and people and let them
do their job (not part-time, not pro bono; hire them, give
January 2020
The Pellucid Perspective - January 2020

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