For more than 20 years, the Internet Movie Database has been the go-to source for everything about movies, from silent pictures from D.W. Griffith to Oscar winners from Steven Spielberg. The principals of the four groups behind newly formed Internet Golf Course Database hope their new venture provides the same expert information on golf courses from coast to coast.
IGDB is a joint effort of GolfCourseRainking.com, Pellucid Corp., Apparation LLC and Never-Search Inc., Internet Golf Course Database. Each of the four entities that comprise IGDB represents a different segment of the golf industry to provide golf course owners and operators with the most complete and comprehensive data available about golf courses throughout North America.
Apparation LLC was founded by Mike Dickoff, who also founded and managed a software subsidiary of Accenture that fueled the proliferation of low-cost airlines.
"When I entered the golf industry, I was surprised that certain basic infrastructure was missing, incomplete or trapped in proprietary products," Dickoff said. "The IGDB partnership is filling one of those gaps by providing a complete, accurate, transparent, usable and extensible directory of golf courses."
Founded by retired U.S. Naval officer Bob Kennedy, GolfCourseRankings.com provides golfers with what the company says are unbiased evaluations of golf courses made by other golfers who have paid to play at the course they review.
Never-Search was founded by Keith Kreft, formerly of Snap-On Tools. That company makes and markets, among other things, the Never-Search for Golf travel planning software, an updatable, PC-based map, showing the exact location of every golf course in the United States that is designed to assist vendor sales professionals.
Pellucid Corp., founded by Jim Koppenhaver, for years has provided customers with the unabashed truth about the golf industry, factors influencing golf course supply and demand and where the industry might be headed in the future. He believes IGDB can meet a need that so far, he says, has gone unfulfilled.
"The multiple industry sources for facility data that we've used over the years have proven to be inconsistent and have often disappointed on quality of facts and update timeliness," he said. "In addition, we need unconstrained use of the basic data, which today's solutions don't allow."