"Good" is a relative term.
Nothing brings that to light more than the past 10 months of the golf business. What has been good for golf has not necessarily been good for the rest of the country.
With little else to do thanks to a global pandemic, people flocked in record numbers to golf courses in (almost) every state since last spring.
Bayou Oaks at City Park in New Orleans reported as many as 9,000 rounds per month last spring and summer. A total of 42,000 rounds were played last year at Allentown Municipal Golf Course in Pennsylvania.
The numbers were similar in just about every other corner of the country.
According to Golf Datatech, rounds played in 2020 were up 14 percent nationwide compared with 2019. That’s a pretty good number, especially considering rounds played in 2019 were up 1.5 percent from the previous year, which was the first increase in rounds demand in three years.
Rounds were up in 46 states. The exceptions were Hawaii, Nevada and South Carolina, where demand was down by 32 percent, 3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively. The report does not keep data for Alaska.
Leading the way were Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota, where play was up 24 percent over the previous year. Play was up by 10 percent or more in 30 other states, according to the survey of private and daily fee facilities nationwide.