Bloomberg: "The golf industry is in the rough."
/On Morning Drive yesterday we discussed the latest article on the demise of golf based on the views of analysts working off of select metrics, including last week's poor golf sales news from Dick's Sporting Goods. (As expected, the possibility of golfers rejecting the concept of multiple driver purchases in a year was not discussed).
I found the article troubling not because it really made a case that golf was "in the rough," but because I also read an oustanding op-ed piece by Karl Taro Greenfeld in the Sunday New York Times (with a great accompanying GIF that looks like my browser some days) on how we have become a headline-heavy, information late world. And the Bloomberg story is just the kind of item that has people saying, "hey, I hear golf is done."
While I don't like defending a golf industry that has been tone deaf on many of the core issues facing golf, the idea of declaring the sport in a death spiral all because the numbers do not conform to Wall Street's unrealistic vision of constant growth, and allowing it to go unanswered, is dangerous. While this Bloomberg story by Lindsey Rupp and Lauren Coleman-Lochner raised a few valid points, I find it peculiar the higher-ups in golf have yet to feel compelled to dispel glaring generalizations in a story going out to Bloomberg's influential readership.
Once the go-to activity for corporate bonding, the sport is suffering from an exodus of players, a lack of interest among millennials and the mass closure of courses.
Last year 160 courses shut down. I learned that in this very story. Of 16,000 courses, 160 does not sound like a mass closure event.
While almost 260,000 women took up golf, some 650,000 men quit.
I thought this was positive news on the women front. The net difference just doesn't seem that alarming of a number compared to the more telling rounds played numbers.
Then, this is just ridiculous:
The tangled personal life of Tiger Woods, who for years was golf’s biggest ambassador, also hasn’t helped. All that has taken a toll on the companies that make and sell golf equipment, including Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. (DKS) and Callaway Golf Co. (ELY)
About 400,000 players left the sport last year, according to the National Golf Foundation. While almost 260,000 women took up golf, some 650,000 men quit. A severe winter on the East Coast worsened the situation this year by delaying the start of golfing season for many.
Is Tiger having an effect on the weather? Have we ever established that he "grew the game," or just grew ratings?
Regarding the bleak outlook based on Dick's not selling as many drivers (in a hellish winter) as they would like...
TaylorMade, the Adidas AG-owned brand that makes clubs and golf accessories, also is suffering. The business saw a 34 percent sales drop in the first quarter, Adidas said earlier this month. Still, not all golf equipment is in decline. Overall, manufacturers’ sales rose 1.2 percent last year, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. While sales of golf balls fell 4.9 percent, clubs grew 4.2 percent.
Even Adidas acknowledged they launched too many products in a short space. So that's a Taylor Made and Wall Street problem of unrealistic expectations, not a health-of-golf issue.
Here's where they wrote that it's all Tiger's fault. With nothing to back up his influence either way.
Woods, 38, helped draw younger players to the game, though his personal challenges may have reduced his influence. He divorced his wife of four years in 2010 after admitting marital infidelity and has suffered a series of injuries.
And my favorite part. One optimistic analyst pointed Asia, where we are exporting most of our bad habits (building long, expensive, name-brand, hard to play, impossible to walk courses for the super-elite).
Even with the decline in participation, the sport of golf may be healthier than people think, said Casey Alexander, a New York-based analyst at Gilford Securities Inc. With better weather, the number of rounds played is likely to rebound -- along with sales, he said. Growing interest in golf in Asia could also help offset a slump in the U.S.
“In Asia, golf is growing just fine,” Alexander said.
Key word: growing. Because if you aren't growing, you're in a total freefall. At least to one way of thinking. And that way of thinking desperately needs to be refuted by the leading families in golf. Unfortunately, their message seems to always be about growing the game, not making the game we have healthier.
The MD segment where we batted around this stuff:
