Golf weather turns favorable in third quarter

Buffalo Grove, Ill. – Pellucid Corp. provides the first of its monthly tracking reports on golf playable hours for the United States compared with the number of rounds played in August, which was previously released by Golf Datatech.

At the close of the first half of the year, Pellucid’s GPH measure for the total United States declined 1.8 percent compared to Golf Datatech’s report of a similar decline in rounds played of 1.3 percent for the same period. Both periods are in comparison to the first half of 2004. This meant that through the first six months of the year, rounds played was slightly outperforming the variance in weather as it relates to golf. A favorable July and August for GPH has moved the comparative ’05 weather into positive territory for the year-to-date period (0.7 percent) while rounds played made only marginal progress toward positive territory and remains negative (-0.6 percent) through August, according to Golf Datatech.

“What’s interesting is for all the variance at regional level on GPH and rounds played, the net effect at the U.S. level is a relatively tight trading range of +/-2 percent in sum,” says Jim Koppenhaver, president of Pellucid. “This provides discussion fodder for the industry optimists (it’s not getting significantly worse) as well as the pessimists (we’re not gaining any ground).

“September weather results show that the year-to-date favorable variance of GPH will increase further to +1.3 percent,” Koppenhaver adds. “It will be interesting to see if the rounds played are able to break into positive territory.”

The Regional Weather Impact Tracking Report was launched by Pellucid to provide monthly tracking of weather variance in 24 regions, as well as a comparison at national level to changes of rounds played.