Different month, same story.
Despite four straight months of overall golf-friendly weather compared to a year ago, there was another year-over-year drop in rounds played in June, according to industry reports.Rounds played, according to the Golf Datatech National Golf Rounds Played Report, were down 2.8 percent in June, compared with the same month from a year ago. For the year, play is down by 2 percent.
The nearly 3 percent decline marks the seventh drop in play in the past eight months, a slide that was interrupted only by a 1 percent increase in May.
The drop in rounds played also came despite four straight months of an increase in what golf industry analyst Jim Koppenhaver of Pellucid Corp. calls golf playable hours, which essentially is an inventory of all the daylight hours in which one could play golf factored against climatic influences, such as wind, rain, snow and severe cold that inhibit one?s ability to play. That number was up by 1 percent in June, compared with the same month a year ago.
Rounds were up by at least 2 percent in eight states, down by at least 2 percent in 29 others, and somewhere in between in a dozen others states. The study does not measure rounds played in Alaska.
The greatest gains in June were in Oregon, where play was up by 10 percent, followed by South Carolina, Massachusetts and Rhode Island at 9 percent each. Play was up by 21 percent in Orlando, Florida, but losses in other key markets translated into an overall gain statewide of just 1 percent.
The most significant losses for the month were, according to Golf Datatech, in Nebraska (down 18 percent), Alabama (12 percent), and Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee (all down 11 percent). The study surveyed rounds played at 3,620 private and daily fee facilities nationwide.