PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

One of my favorite golf magazines, Links, came up with an insightful look at major golf industry trends.

Here is a summary of those trends with my comments.

Gambling on Golf

Recent legislation has opened the path for sports betting, with deals already signed in most of the major sports. Golf leaders, including PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, have made it clear that golf will be no different.

The PGA Tour has tapped IMG Arena, a sports betting service and content hub, to distribute official Tour scoring data for media and betting use. Fantasy golf may have stirred interest in such data, but viewers having a little skin in the game takes that interest to another level. The Match between Tiger and Phil was the first to include statistical data to showcase the real-time odds of a players winning a hole or pulling off a certain shot, while promoting sponsor MGM Grand.

Comment: Not my favorite trend. But, while I won’t participate, I guess there is no need to impose my values on others.

New Distribution Platforms for Golf Coverage

According to the National Golf Foundation, 22 million people watched streaming coverage of a golf tournament in 2017, and more than 1-in-4 Americans (age 6+)—82 million people in total—consumed some form of golf media in 2017. Our golf consumption habits continue to change, and that won’t stop in the foreseeable future. New ways to consume golf media are on the way.

PGA Tour Live is now part of the NBC Gold subscription offering while the PGA of America signed a deal to be part of streaming service ESPN Plus. With the availability of tournament-specific mobile apps, a growing presence of digital content, and expanded hours of tournament coverage, live streaming is on the rise.

With the PGA Tour’s domestic network and cable TV deals expiring in 2021, the future landscape for golf’s media engagement across multiple platforms soon could look very different than we currently know it.

Comment: No problem here. On occasion, I see stories that indicate that golf is losing players and watchers. The media influences above indicate almost the reverse.

Another trend is that, when Tiger Woods plays in a tournament, the gate and the TV stats go up. No problem with Tiger playing, but his participation doesn’t drive my interest.

Smart Technology in Golf Clubs Goes Next Level

While media companies and betting houses present data from professional players, other companies are working to gather yours. On-course data has long been the missing ingredient for club fitters and instructors because it is tough to gather, but that’s no longer the case thanks to products like Cobra Connect irons with built-in sensors from Arccos Golf, the tracking performance system.

Kudos to Cobra Golf for creating a first-mover advantage, but look for Arccos to expand its built-in availability in 2019. While it hasn’t been announced yet, retailers who’ve already placed orders say that Ping and TaylorMade will be the next equipment makers to do so, and they won’t be the last. Arccos’s Tom Williams says the company is rapidly expanding to the point that it predicts in 2020 more than half of all new golf clubs will have Arccos sensors as a standard feature. The sensors capture hundreds of data points throughout the round that can be used for instruction, strategizing, and more. The Arccos Caddie system uses that data in conjunction with artificial intelligence to suggest how to play each hole on any given course. The system knows your typical misses, your strengths, and more. The company says new users who log 10-plus rounds in a year showed a 3.79-stroke improvement in handicap.

Comment: I consider myself to be a “feel players.” If the clubs and my swing feel right, good. I don’t need much high-level technology to be able to play well and have fun on a golf course.

For those who like and/or benefit from technology, the built-in sensor capability probably seems like a God-send. I imagine one golf pro who will use the new technology immediately is Bryson DeChambeau. He plays golf like an engineer and, while his process looks awkward on the course, it is hard to argue with his recent success.

The Return of the Short Course

In September, architect Tom Doak announced he was taking the short movement in a different direction. Sedge Valley, the fourth course in Sand Valley’s resort lineup, will measure 6,100 yards with a par of 68. On the private side, Desert Mountain will soon open an 18-hole par-3 course, named Seven in recognition of being the seventh course at the Scottsdale, Arizona-based residential-golf community. It will join other recent openings such as nine-hole par-3 layouts L’il Wick at Wickenburg Ranch Golf & Social Club and The Harmon Course at The Floridian.

Course architects and developers closely track the costs to maintain golf courses based on their length and, as you’d expect, it’s tough to be profitable with longer courses when you factor in labor, fuel, water, and more. Add that a younger generation doesn’t want five-hour rounds and short courses become even more attractive.

Comment: A good development, I think. As I have gotten older, I have become a believer in the Jack Nicklaus “play it forward.” Doing so is always possible on most golf courses, if you can get past the label of the forward tees being “women’s tees.”

They aren’t. They are tees for golfers like me who don’t hit the ball as far as we used to.

Shorter courses will help offset two of the golf’s problems – (a) courses built mostly for length, and (b) that fact that many young people are now drawn to the game because of the time it takes to play.

Beware the Golf Retail Giant Otherwise Known As Amazon

After several years of market correction, the surviving golf retailers are starting to rebound, due in part to equipment-makers cutting back on their streams of non-stop club launches. But the golf retail landscape is still shifting, and, like all of the retail industry, there is about more pain ahead. Credit Suisse estimated 8,640 U.S. stores across retail closed in 2017, and as many as 25 per cent of U.S. malls will close by 2022. The elephant in the room is Amazon.

In 2018, Golf Datatech released a study of the overall effect of Amazon on the golf equipment and apparel markets. It found that the golf sector is being effected much the same as other consumer products by the e-commerce giant, and especially so by Amazon Prime members.

Expect even more competition on price as companies start or continue selling directly to consumers through websites to cut out the middle.

Comment: I don’t buy golf equipment on-line. Perhaps just due to my age. I like to gain the feel of a club before buying and, fortunately for me, I have the opportunity to do so at my home club in Salem, Oregon.

Further, I like the idea that golf retailers appear to be cutting back a bit on continual launches of new clubs and golf balls.

For me, when I upgraded several years to an Epic driver from Callaway, I feel in love with the club which game me more distance off the tee. So, I stayed with the Epic (which is still in my bag today) even as, for some reason, Callaway came out with a new driver, the Rogue.

Overall, the Links Magazine story indicates that there are some solid new trends in golf – trends that can counter, at least in part, other stats that indicate that interest in golf is dying.