The National Golf Foundation, which tracks data on courses and rounds played around the U.S., on Tuesday released an update to its studies on how the coronavirus has impacted the recreational game.
Following are several key takeaways from the update.
Open or closed
Nationwide, 74 percent of in-season courses remain open during the pandemic, based on a survey of 1,006 facilities on March 25-27 (the survey has a margin of error of 3 percent ).
The report breaks it down further: 54 percent of municipal golf courses that are in season are open, 78 percent of public daily fee courses are open, and 77 percent of private clubs are open.
Twelve states have shut down golf
Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin have shut down the game entirely. Every other state is allowing golf, at least in some limited form. Individual counties or municipalities within those states may have closed golf courses on a more limited scale.
The vast majority of golf courses that remain open, however, have shuttered at least some of their operations. For example, 87 percent of courses report they have shut down or restricted their food and beverage services, 27 percent have shuttered their clubhouse and 25 percent have locked the doors to their pro shop.
Judging the impact
In a check of the NGF Top 100 Businesses in Golf, 42 percent of courses report significant impact to their operations with a particular mention of marketing, sales, administration and communications. Five percent reported an insignificant impact, 30 percent called it a moderate impact, and 23 percent said the impact to their business has been severe.
Demand for the game?
The report says that rounds of golf were up 15.2 percent in January and February nationwide for facilities that were open based on seasonality, with the best improvement being 25.5 percent on Pacific Coast states.
But based on research of facilities that are open, 42 percent nationwide said that rounds were down from March 21 to March 27, with 69 percent of that decrease attributable to coronavirus and 30 percent attributable to weather. An average amount of rounds played was reported at 26 percent of facilities, and above average play was reported at 32 percent of courses in that period.
Serious golf fans
In two U.S. markets – Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Palm Springs, California – there were more golf-related Google searches than coronavirus-related searches.
But in what could be a bad sign for the sport, for the first time ever nationwide there were more Google searches exploring unemployment than for golf-related topics.
