Greetings golf stakeholders:

Welcome to the month two “shelter-in-place” edition of The Pellucid Perspective. The encouraging news is last month’s issue was set against the backdrop of less than half of US courses being open, we’re now 95%+ (albeit with significant limitations and restrictions on play). The upside is that we’re seeing healthy pent-up demand for the limited golf we’re able to offer while the downside is that restrictions on cart use are going to both dent revenue potential as well as keep some of our best age 70+ golfers off the links initially. Our lead story this month is by Harvey Silverman who looks ahead to the PGA Merchandise Show and what that may look like. COVID has reshaped so many industries and activities and trade shows obviously are at the intersection of travel, entertainment and large-scale social events so what January brings will be interesting to say the least. For Harvey’s take, based on discussions with PGA of America and NGCOA leaders, click here:  May Pellucid Perspective

In addition, our May journey (unsurprisingly) addresses how COVID-19 continues to reshape and roil our industry:

• Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay relays his initial COVID golf experience as a golfer as well as the major considerations that operators are having to contend with in providing safe, enjoyable golf to their unusually appreciative customers. Building off his April article theme, he still believes that there is a golden opportunity for golf to re-energize existing golfers to get out and play and potentially some upside in getting formers and new folks to “get out and play” given our unusual status as being “COVID OK” vs. team sports and folks not having a plethora of sports TV options currently (can’t wait for those initial baseball games with empty stands or cardboard cutouts in the stands like Korea, ha, ha).

• Publisher Jim Koppenhaver delivers (a month late) on his vow to not make everything be about COVID with his article highlighting the City of Dayton’s recent decision to pare their golf portfolio from 108 to 18 holes (wow!). He characterizes it as “the road less travelled” vs. other municipalities that are either buying distressed courses or doubling down on their existing bet. The good news is that Dayton becomes, in one fell swoop, one of the few supply/demand balanced markets in the country.

• Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the April weather impact results (down) and March YtD Utilization (way down but not unexpected with positive weather running into the COVID rounds buzzsaw). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours and Utilization while our Market Focus spotlight of the Top 25 US Golf Markets falls on Minneapolis, MN the 14th healthiest market by our proprietary, multi-dimensional scorecard. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 15 activities during the past month with Closeds beating Transactions by a score of 12-3.

• As a reminder, Pellucid recently introduced our Cognilogic Foresight product, Golf Playable Hours/Capacity Rounds forecast 60 days out, which can be purchased ordered here at a one-time cost of $150. As we finalize our annual subscription access and pricing, for a limited time all one-time report fees will be credited back to subscriptions.

We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; Troon Golf, KemperSports and Golf Business Solutions for their continued support of intelligent dialogue on key industry issues and key health metrics tracking. For all those service providers and suppliers to the golf industry out there with the latest-and-greatest to offer to the industry thought-leaders who read our monthly publication, might we suggest considering joining our merry little band through our most popular 12-month sponsorship program? (offered at an improved value relative to our entry-level six month sponsorship rate) Twelve-month sponsors also receive all Pellucid industry-standard reports (State of the Industry, Outside the Ropes, Monthly Weather Impact Tracking (Nat’l, Reg’l, Markets), Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard, National Golf Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard and US Golf Supply on Sale report). Sponsorship provides monthly exposure to approximately 30K industry leaders and followers and associates your brand with Pellucid’s effort to expand intelligent thinking on today’s most challenging industry issues. For more “opportunistic” spenders, we might suggest one of our smaller-bite Ad Partner programs for those who may not be able to make a 6 or 12-month commitment (as short as 3 months are now available) or who may not need a half page or more exposure (quarter pages now available). If you’re interested in knowing more about sponsorship opportunities or our ad partner options, contact Publisher Jim Koppenhaver (847.808.7651, jim@pellucidcorp.com).

If you know of associates who would benefit from the topics and insights covered in this issue, feel free to forward this email and encourage them to register on the Pellucid website (www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist) to join the conversation, discussion and debate.

We also continue to spread the word on Pellucid’s next-generation golf course database, the Internet Golf Course Database (IGDB) with partners Apparation LLC, Never-Search and GolfCourseRanking.com which now offers annual subscriptions for <$2.5K (that’s a compelling value!). IGDB now powers Pellucid’s Golf Local Market Analyzer and has added functionality to our project work like being able to tally and profile course closures within key US markets over time. For more information on our comprehensive database, updated quarterly and refreshed completely every 9 months (all 15K+ US courses), email support@theigdb.com.