Grow the Game, right?!

One of the biggest goals of the PGA TOUR for the last few years is to expand their reach to introduce more people to the game. And at least this year, it looks like they’re starting to succeed.

According to initial reports, there have been more people playing Golf in the last few months compared to the same months in 2019. According to the stats, 20% more rounds of golf were played in August of 2020 compared to 2019. That’s following the months of June and July where the numbers of rounds played were up 13% and 19% respectively. That equals about 27 million more rounds this year than last year over that period.

Those stats only speak to players in the United States, not internationally. And not surprisingly, warm weather states have seen the largest increase. Texas has increased the most at 39%, next is Florida at 37%, and Arizona with 31%. The stats also show that every state had at least a 2% increase in rounds play.

While these are all positive signs for the game of golf, one has to think that a lot of this increase may be due to the fact that the U.S. is still highly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Meaning, some of these new rounds may just be from players that have nothing better to do and are only playing because it’s a way to get out of the house and get some activity.

This seems to be the biggest concern of the National Golf Foundation. The NGF is the organization that has conducted this study and have stated that retention is going to be the “achilles heel” for all golf programs. It’s inevitable that some of these players will revert back to their normal activities after the pandemic has subsided, but they hope to keep at least some of these players as regular or casual golfers.

While the early results from this study are looking promising, it’s still too early to tell if these stats will hold through the rest of 2020. Hopefully, a few of the first time golfers participating in the game this year will decide that they enjoy it and stick around. But if not, the golf world will have to keep up their recruiting efforts.