I have heard the term “growing the game of golf” bantered around a lot in recent times.

For some parts of the industry, a growth in tournaments and tournament prize funds is a solid indicator. Other parts of the industry an increase in golf travel or an increase in retail sales is the barometer used to track growth in the game. In Australia were looking for growth in competition rounds along with more participation to be the key indicator. More people playing more golf!

What actually does “growing the game” mean though for the Australian industry as a whole and how do we best track it. The industry has started reporting competition rounds on a monthly basis, which has been a great start. When it comes to overall participation in the game though, there doesn’t seem to be any regular detailed reporting being done outside of the every couple year industry reports. This is too far between reports for any real effectiveness to programs. Most courses don’t track golf rounds, or if they do, it’s only the competition rounds being reported. This is only about half the story!

As there seems to be a few different definitions for the various parts of the industry, would a national monthly scorecard now be in order to track our true progress and to compare against prior years and for more importantly helping set future targets? The Golf Managers Association (GMA) has recently launched a new Club Benchmarking system which will be used to track heaps of club data much more easily plus more accurate regular reporting can then be done to all stakeholders.

In the US the National Golf Foundation assists in providing monthly reports about a whole list of areas of participation, which the industry there can make review and make adjustments to operations. Areas such as average temperature, precipitation, days open for play, and rounds played in all the various regions in the country, which then are all compared against prior periods.  They also have just added three additional dimensions to the analysis; the components of annual “churn” in the participant base (how many new vs. how many lost), the average frequency (rounds/golfer/year) for each of the involvement groups (Occasional and Core which are further comprised of Moderates and Avids) and a profile of the Beginning Golfers (new to the sport in the survey year).

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