After a favorable November compared to 2006, December 2007 went out with a respectable but similar performance to the prior year, according to Pellucid, a golf industry information and insight provider. Golf playable hours (GPH) for the month of December at the national level were up 0.4 percent compared to the same period last year. This flat performance left the year-to-date (YTD) GPH virtually unchanged at +0.4 percent which is how the year ended.
The neutral national climate results for December mask the diverse results from the key warm weather regions, the company reports. The Southeast and Southeast Coast regions saw a significant downturn in GPH for the month as did Northern California Coastal. Warm climate winners in the December weather lottery were the Gulf Coast, Texas and the Inland California Valley. The remaining key regions of Florida, Arizona and Southern California saw only marginal changes in weather vs. prior year.
The YTD regional breadth ratio finished the year in positive territory with gainers outnumbering decliners by a ratio of 1.8:1 (nine regions with favorable GPH vs. five regions with unfavorable GPH and 10 in the neutral zone). The recently-released Golf DataTech rounds played numbers for November added more fuel to the "bears vs. squirrels" debate as national rounds disappointed coming in at -5 percent compared to year ago for the month. This is juxtaposed to Pellucid's previously-reported GPH results for November of +16 percent, meaning that golfers by and large passed up favorable weather late in the season (particularly in the northern parts of the Midwest and East) and opted for something other than additional rounds of golf.
"It's hard to believe that the annual sum total of this tapestry we call golf at the national level for the year is basically going to be flat weather, flat rounds but that is the storyline here," says Pellucid President Jim Koppenhaver. "Encouragingly, there are meaningful variations at the regional, state and individual facility level which means our collective work in creating more granular measures has not been in vain. More encouragingly, we're seeing positive scorecards for the majority of our facility clients comparing their rounds and revenue performance to weather for the year. At the national industry level however, it's another year sideways for weather-adjusted rounds which can either be interpreted as good (it didn't go down) or bad (it didn't go up)."
More detail on the results from national to individual facility level can be obtained through combinations of Pellucid's Weather Impact Analyses: The Regional Weather Impact Tracking report, the Facility 10-year Weather Impact Trend report, the Facility Annual Weather Impact Analysis and the Facility Monthly Weather Impact Tracking report.
For more specific information on the Regional Weather Impact Tracking and a sample report, interested parties should contact Jim Koppenhaver at jimk@pellucidcorp.com.