According to Pellucid Corp, this winter’s weather has had a big impact on the golf industry and total rounds played, especially in December and November of last year.  Apparently January was a start back in the right direction, but given the weather across most of the US, I find that pretty hard to believe.  Hell, we’ve had two polar vortexes roll through Chicago!  Either way, Pellucid says “Golf Playable Hours” increased by 30% compared to last year.  Again, I don’t believe it, but I’m not a scientist.  Pellucid’s report on January Golf Weather Impact is below.  I find these fascinating so I hope you enjoy these reports as well.

As we turn the page on a very forgettable weather year in 2018, January was an encouraging start to a new year as Golf Playable Hours (GPH) increased 30% compared to the same month last year. That result also represents the Year-to-Date (YtD) figure given that we only have one month played in ’19. Regional GPH breadth was likewise favorable at 4:1 with 14 favorable regions countered by 4 unfavorable regions (with 2 falling in the neutral zone of +/- 2% and the remaining 25 regions are out of season). Looking at weather impact performance by day-of-week for the YtD period, both weekparts (weekday & weekend) were positive and all days except Monday were “in the green.” Those of you who attended the State of the Industry presentation (or bought the report already) have already seen the full year call for weather and know not only that it has to be up against an ugly ’18 but also whether the ’19 rebound will meet or exceed the 10-year average weather. The rest of you just have to guess (or order one of our weather impact reports/services and then you’ll be in the know as well).

Played Rounds data for December published by Golf Datatech followed Pellucid’s previous GPH guidance (down) registering -8% for the month vs. Year Ago. The silver lining is that, after factoring in weather, Utilization was flat. For the YtD period, we finished with a marginal gain in Utilization (+1.3pts) meaning that we did the best we could in the face of a weather gale-force headwind. Beneath this national picture, there are winners and losers in both Played Rounds and Utilization Rates among the 61 key Markets (including Pellucid’s designated Top 25 markets) and this next-level-detail of results is also available to Pellucid Publications members and Geographic Weather Impact report subscribers.

Jim Koppenhaver comments, “The January weather results are the first of many positive “comps” we’ll see in ’19 as last year’s weather was as ugly as we’ve seen in over a decade. Looking at December YtD results for Utilization at the 61 markets level, we saw the majority of markets finish in the neutral zone for Utilization but, among the up/down markets, the breadth was favorable breadth at 3:1 ratio (17 markets showing Utilization gains against 5 markets showing declines with the remaining/majority 39 occupying the neutral zone). Among Pellucid’s Top 25 US Golf Markets for the YtD period, Utilization gainers were led by San Diego and Orange County while Miami and Dallas/Ft Worth were the leading laggards. Again, if you want to know which of our Top 25 Golf Markets posted Utilization gains, how much and what the dynamics are behind those gains, just go to our website and get on the Monthly Weather Impact subscription or sign up for Cognilogic (facility-level access via the web).”