Golf rounds played by club members are up on 2020

Alistair Dunsmuir
By Alistair Dunsmuir October 18, 2021 07:56

New data by software company BRS finds that there were even more rounds of golf in the UK played by members of clubs in total for the year to the end of summer 2021 than there were at that stage in 2020, although there has been a recent slowdown.

The same company reported recently that visitor numbers pointed to a predicted pandemic boom slowdown from early summer 2021, and while there has been a similar trend with membership numbers, they appear to be in an even healthier place.

The software, used by more than 705,000 golf club members, finds that 15.3 million rounds of golf were processed in the year to the end of August. This equates to 5.6 million more rounds of golf compared with 2019 (a 45 percent increase) at the end of August, and even 938,000 additional rounds compared with the end of August 2020, the year that saw the summer of unprecedented growth.

However, as with visitor numbers, there has been an expected membership rounds slowdown during this summer when compared with last summer.

“At the beginning of the year golf in the UK was closed, everywhere except Scotland, for pretty much the entirety of the first quarter,” reports a spokeswoman for BRS.

“When courses did reopen, we saw the expected initial spike in April and May.

“As the summer progressed and the UK and Ireland began to reopen in other sectors, the number of member bookings has been dropping month on month June to August. June saw a 21 percent drop year-on-year in member rounds, July was 23 percent down and August saw an 18 percent dip.

“This represents two million fewer member rounds played over these three months. External factors certainly came into play this summer. A spell of poor weather, the Euros and England’s progression to the final, restaurants and bars reopening, live sport welcoming back spectators, and people starting to return to the office in a flexible format, all contributed and golf had to compete once again for its share of people’s time.

“It should be noted that the numbers we are seeing in 2021 are still miles ahead of the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, but there has been a shift in recent months.”

 

Alistair Dunsmuir
By Alistair Dunsmuir October 18, 2021 07:56
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2 Comments

  1. TPC Colorado October 19, 09:58

    Record year for TPC Colorado! Number of rounds up substantially over last year!

    We are still booking rounds with some beautiful Golf weather here!

    Play on

    Reply to this comment
  2. TLowe October 18, 14:40

    That’s great news to see high numbers and surely the drop is because holidays are now over and 300,000 people just came off of furlough! What will that huge spike in furlough change mean for golf?

    Reply to this comment
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