Transcription
Where is golf and where is it going?
I think within a couple three years you're going to uh go and get on a simulator. You're going to hit 10 balls. In 48 hours, you will have a bespoke ball made for you with your swing speed, your launch angle, your softness desired, and it it'll be totally bespoke to Jimmy Roberts.
Two perspectives today on the state of the game from a pair of men whose business is all about the business of golf.
We've got 38 million people in America playing golf away from the golf course. There's not the same orthodoxies there. So like the whole Top Golf phenomenon is very much aligned with competitive socializing and you know people like beer Jimmy. It's [laughter] it's amazing. The big swing is open for business right now. [applause and cheering]
Hi again everyone, Jimmy Roberts with you. Thanks so much for joining us once more here on the big swing. You know, everyone's got an opinion. Some are just more informed than others. When it comes to golf, you'd certainly have to think that's the case with Greg Nathan, president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation, an organization founded in 1936 and devoted to providing agnostic research about the health of the game. On the heels of its recent state of the industry report, we sat down with Nathan to try and cut through the noise and get a handle on probably the most critical question in the game. Is the sky the limit or is the sky falling? Is golf healthy right now?
Jimmy? I think I think golf is really healthy. In many ways, golf is healthier than it's ever been. Uh, in the history of golf in America, and I mean, we break up the industry into like two hemispheres. So, one half of the businesses in golf, their end customer is a consumer, right? The other half, their end customer is like a an owner, an operator, a superintendent, a golf pro. And I'll start with that side. So golf courses are more financially healthy right now than they've ever been. And it's really pretty simple math. Four of the last five years have been all-time record rounds.
Four of the last five years.
Since COVID, not coincidentally.
Right? And if you if you look at that, it's pretty simple math. It's rounds are up and green fees are up and you do that multiplication and you're gonna have financially healthy golf courses. On the other side, we're not uh we're we've been on a really great run in terms of growth of green grass players, growth of off-course players as well. And uh I think that they're they're spending uh at a pretty high level. You've got your consumables like golf balls which are always going to run parallel with rounds.
Right?
So, you know, both sides are really healthy. If I had to pick one right now, I'd say the golf course side.
Mhm.
Uh which would be a very rare thing for me to say over the past 30 years.
Yeah. Because there was there were a lot of closures and it was up and down. And interestingly enough, I think one of the biggest growth segments of the game is non-green grass golf, right?
Mhm.
That's one of the real interesting things about the huge growth spurt that golf has been having the last 8 years or so.
Right?
And actually, we started growing in 2017. Like, we came off the bottom before COVID and COVID really kicked it in kicked it into high gear. Um, [snorts] but it's it's such an interesting time relative to the balance of supply and demand where these four out of the last five years of record rounds.
If you compare it to the tiger boom, which is the last time the business was this good.
That's the early 2000s.
Correct.
It's 1996. We look at as 1996 and 2003.
Okay.
We compare those periods uh quite a bit. So these four out of the last 5 years of record rounds are with 2,000 fewer facilities.
Really?
Yes. So pretty much everything one would need to know about the supply and demand relationship in golf being great today.
Right.
Could be explained purely by that.
Right? Um, is it I heard you use an interesting term when we spoke before. You talked about whether or not golf was sticky.
Mhm.
What does that mean?
Well, one of the things that we track every single year is how it's like the stocks and flows. So the inflow almost every year for the past seven, eight years has been between five and six million people. So that means uh 6.1 million people played golf on a golf course in 2025 who did not play the year before.
Got it.
And in a way there's a certain element of that that's an indictment. the one, you know, there's so much good news right now, Jimmy, but the the tough news is that we have all these new people coming in, but I we grew by one million.
In 2025.
So, what you're saying is that of those 6 million, 5 million decided they weren't coming back?
Right? It's not perfect math, but if you look at it over the course of five, six years, then you can start seeing every year five or six million people come in and sometimes we grow. Sometimes we get five million new and we grow by nothing.
And that's where golf has this enormous opportunity, Jimmy, which is golf remains incredibly intimidating. Uh the environment is very uncomfortable for noviceses and women and people of color, but really any novice who's not already in the franchise. Like you and I go and play, we know where to go and what to do. But when someone doesn't know, all of a sudden golf doesn't seem like so much fun.
Right? Can be very very intimidating.
Is there any way to to measure some of those aspects of, you know, why that is?
We have measured it. I mean, we started measuring.
And how do you measure it?
It's funny. We we started measuring it, I'm going to say in 2011, okay? And we called it attrition and attraction research. And what it was designed to do was figure out what does it take for somebody to get hooked.
On the game of golf.
Okay? Or why do they leave?
Okay.
And essentially the answer lies in um four things that are most closely tied to whether someone thinks golf is fun for them.
Okay?
So there's two that are on what I would call competence.
Okay? And they are I play well enough to enjoy the game.
Sometimes I do.
Right? Or uh I get shot euphoria, at least one or two shots around, right? And those of us who play know what that is. You compress the ball, you see it fly.
Um and then there the other two are on uh comfort.
Okay? Okay. And that means um if they for them to think golf is fun and for golf to be sticky, it means I have to be comfortable in the golf course environment and I have to be comfortable around other golfers.
That's where the the golf course owner operator has this amazing opportunity to go further. Like we're in the hospitality business and making people feel comfortable. That's a hospitality goal. That's an objective and I think that's where there's just an enormous opportunity for the golf industry.
Okay. So, you're in the research and data industry basically.
Is there a number that you think wows people? You know, when you look at all the research that you've done.
And you know, I I know that we say it all the time that there are actually more golf courses in the United States than there are McDonald's. Everybody that I say that to, they go, "Wait, what?" Is there an equivalent kind of fact that you uh like to keep in your holster?
Sure. One one that I talk about all the time.
Yeah.
Is golf's total reach.
Okay.
Okay. The game's total reach in America is 136 million people. And I just mentioned.
That's a third of the population.
Right? I mean, we think it's not uh it it's conceivable that five or 10 years from now 50% of Americans could be in that group. Play, watch, follow, or read about golf. That's what the 136 million is. Play, watch, follow, read. And right now, it's about two out of five Americans. It's pretty serious. And that's why we're doing what we do here on Big Swain.
Um, what do you think the biggest headwind is for golf? What's the biggest threat? What's the biggest impediment? The thing that stands most in the way of this upward trajectory.
I I I go back to what I mentioned about the way that golf's orthodoxies often get in the way of people feeling comfortable and welcome in the golf course environment.
Now, you you you asked me before and I I probably didn't I I didn't answer it directly was about off-course.
Yep.
Okay. So, we've got 38 million people in America playing golf away from the golf course. There's not the same orthodoxies.
Right?
There people are there to have fun and to have a beer and to eat some wings.
And wear t-shirts and jeans and.
So like the whole Top Golf phenomenon is is very much aligned with competitive socializing and uh you know people like beer Jimmy. It's it's amazing.
I know a lot of them.
Yeah, people like beer and they like food and it's an amazing thing about how off-course um and the removal of of a lot of this formality it's fun and so people do continue to do it.
So is there a kind of a a transfer of these off-course experiences to the green grass experience or are they entirely separate?
So there there is uh you know people tend to call and say Craig tell me about the conversion what's happening with conversion. Now one thing that I want to say up front is like people don't graduate.
Okay. They they don't just decide that I'm going to leave this off-course thing and I'm only going to do the on-course thing.
Um, as a as a research guy, what I would tell you is that the only way to to really study this would be to find 500 people who don't currently play golf and follow them around for a few years.
Okay? A linear.
Yeah. You know, a linear study of these people. So, we can't do that. It's cost prohibitive. But what we do look at are the we last year we had 3.3 million people play golf on a golf course for the first time ever.
Okay.
I call them never evers.
Okay. We study them and we find out okay when you started playing when you did the when you broke the never ever streak did you do so having an off-course experience.
Right?
Topgolf simulator driving range.
And I think it's in the neighborhood of 40% said yes and that it influenced their move to playing on-course golf. So the answer is yes, there is some conversion.
Absolutely. We also found that people who uh play golf away from the golf course are 40% more likely to be interested in playing the green grass game.
You know, I've also heard you talk about something which I I think is really really interesting, which is golf's on deck circle. What does that mean?
Well, if you think about all the amazing growth we've had and 20% growth uh in the number of golfers since pre-COVID since since 2019 and.
Repeat the question.
I've heard you talk about golf's on deck circle.
Yes.
Tell tell me exactly what that means.
Okay. So, we've had we've had all this growth, which might make people say, "Oh, well, everybody who wants to play in America has already activated themselves.
Right?"
And that's not true. We've been measuring for more than a decade what we call latent demand.
And latent demand just means someone who does not currently play golf on the golf course, but expresses significant interest in playing.
Where where do they express this interest?
So we in order to come up with our national numbers, how many people how many people play golf, we actually do 36,000 interviews a year.
Wow.
In order to collect data. So if if you were a recipient of one of our surveys and you said, "I did not play golf on a green grass golf course in 2025." We asked them, "How interested are you.
In playing golf now?"
Right? And 21 million people say very interested the number one answer.
So that's what I'm referring to as one part of the on deck circle is that there are 20 over 20 million people who are very interested in activating. They won't all.
And then you have this group who play off-course only and there's about 19 million of those. Those people are also in the on deck circle. They clearly are enjoying a a golf related activity and I don't think there's a sport or activity in the world that wouldn't absolutely give their left pinky toe, you know, to have this many people doing a similar activity away from the golf course.
Golf, as you've stated, is growing. It used to be a very kind of kind of socioeconomically elite or elevated uh constituency, but it's democratized now.
Um, is there any way to talk about or measure who golfers are? Is that socioeconomic level? Has that remained the same?
Well, we know we know certain things. While the number of non-white golfers has grown significantly over the last few years, we're at the high water mark in history. It's between seven and eight seven and 8 million. We also know that, you know, it in terms of um golf being what we would call a social imperative.
Okay.
Golf is not yet a social imperative in the Hispanic or black community. the way that I think it's just a it seems to be a more culturally natural thing over time that the Caucasian community if you become successful, if you get a great job and you're upwardly mobile, that golf is part of that journey.
And I love that we're at the high water marks in the game becoming becoming uh more diverse. But I think for that to really change over time there need some time needs to pass.
Uh and and folks in underrepresented it underrepresented communities that it it has the chance to become a more social imperative because golf is amazing on so many levels health and wellness. It's great for business. It's great for you know I call it therapy.
I mean it makes you crazy.
I need I need therapy.
Right. It makes us crazy.
It does. Yes.
Um, what are you watching?
The the growth in simulator golf.
Okay.
Um, and we have to be watching the growth in off-course because there's only about 10 or 15% of white space left in green grass. Okay. 2/3 of public golf courses in America are at or near capacity. 3/4 of private golf courses in America are at or near capacity. So the question becomes where is golf going to grow? It's going to grow away from the golf course and simulators uh unlike Topgolf which of course requires a significant investment to stand up a facility that might entertain two or three million customers in a year.
Right?
The growth in the availability of simulator activity.
It it's a much lower bar. It's much easier to to have that opportunity for it to be accessible to you. Greg Nathan of the National Golf Foundation and a proud graduate of White Plains High School. Thanks so much for joining us. Comcast business advanced networking and security solutions help turn businesses into logistics mastering, supply chain transforming, seamlessly restocking, frictionless paying, poke bowl ordering, cyber securing, mobile access granting, data managing. Welcome to the worlding modern businesses powering the engine of modern business. Comcast business. In this week's installment of making better decisions powered by AON, we asked PXG founder Bob Parsons to talk about one of his best business decisions. Well, uh, the decision that I made lately that I'm I'm the most proud of is I decide to give a million and a half to these small little little businesses that are supporting dogs and cats and rescue and helping people that don't have money pay their vet bills and all that sort of stuff. and um I got to meet them all and I'll tell you what, one of the happiest days of the year.
Jeff Holsho is a managing director at Morgan Stanley and chairman of the institutional securities group. He has been involved in a wide variety of the company's businesses across a number of sectors through the years, but somehow always seems to find his way back to the thing that that's one of his passions, golf. Jeff, thanks so much for being with us. you know, you're our first guest live here in Studio 1B.
Well, thanks for having me, Jimmy. I'm uh pleased to be here and the studio looks great and I wish you all the success in the world.
Thanks. Thanks very much. Um, let's uh take up where Greg Nathan left off and talk a little bit about the health of the game. You have been involved in so many transactions, not only um in energy, which is one of your specialties, I know, but golf because you love it. You're involved with the USGA. You've been involved with the Metropolitan Golf Association for a long, long time here in the New York area. You keep a keen eye on golf. What do you make of the health of golf at this point?
I think golf generally is in great shape. I mean, post COVID uh was an incredible um lift for the whole space. It's, as you heard Greg say, it's up probably 20% participation since 2020. Um but I would also say just anecdotally, I mean, you and I were just recently at the PGA show. Haven't seen that much energy, that many exhibitors. The amount of ancillary capital and energy that's being spent around the space uh is exciting.
Greg's an optimist. Um he theorizes that maybe a third of the American population is engaged in somehow with the game of golf as either players or fans uh interested on some level. You think that's an overly optimistic number? Do you think that's close to realistic?
I don't know really how to judge that, Jimmy. I think we're more focused on, you know, hard numbers. The number of rounds, the number of people, um, you know, the ancillary, who reads about it, who touches it, who sees it on TV, much harder for us to have a handle on. But um there's no doubt that the core passionate uh interested golfer uh is larger today than it's been. Uh it's flattened out a little bit over.
Has it?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it was growing 6 7 8 10% for a couple years for COVID, you know, now maybe it's 1 or 2% uh on the top line, but the off-course participation is growing much faster.
Yeah. The the whole idea that you may have the same amount of people who experience golf off the course as on the course. That's a sea change over the last I'd imagine decade or so.
Yeah. And I I'd say in the same vein as the COVID bump, we had just an expansion of gender, age, you know, you name it, the the underserved categories of our sport, I think, have grown dramatically. Uh we've seen a big rise in adaptive golf. We've seen a big rise in, you know, people that want to participate in the game but don't have four hours or don't have the resources to join a club. [clears throat]
Um, I think that's an important aspect of how we're seeing the game grow.
We know that the street likes the demographic that golf represents or at least a big part of the golf demographic. How does the street think about the industry as a whole? I mean bullish.
I think I think it is bullish. I think um you know people want to seem to recreate more. They want to be entertained more. They've had additional resources to do so. I think one of the things you heard Greg say is that the clubs have gotten better at viewing it as an entertainment facility, not just an athletic loop around the golf club. So, the food is better and they're doing speeches and they're doing lots of things to keep people uh in that community and I think that's helped with the stickiness uh factor you talked about earlier of staying in the game versus, you know, going to do something else. Um, I do think that we've had a bunch of entrepreneurs in the apparel business, in the media business enter, and I think it's cooler. I think the younger kids are it's more acceptable as a sport and a pastime than it's ever been. It's less intimidating. Uh I think all those things are factors in that um if money continues to get spent in the industry then obviously the street will continue to support both the public stocks and and the debt um you know issues that we do to the industry. Now the industry in general, you've heard me say this is is quite small. If you look, there aren't that many public stocks in the equipment business, but a Kushnet and Callaway are the two biggest and their stocks have doubled in the last, you know, 18 months. So, there is a sign that Wall Street is getting more comfortable understanding what the drivers are of the economics of the golf business.
What do you make of that?
Oh, I make it that, you know, they finally caught up with the volumes. They've caught up with the $700 driver being having margins that are uh you know more respectable than um [clears throat] it's it's a hard product because it has so much R&D and requires so much marketing. You know, they used to launch them every 6 months or every 12 months and it just it flooded the market and it was confusing more than anything else. Now, I think most of the major manufacturers are going back to this two-year cycle where woods drivers and woods are one year, irons the next year, and then they alternate. So, it's every two years for a new driver, every two years for a new set of irons. And the ball still changes annually for the most part.
And depending on what happens with the USGA and R&A rules, I mean, that may be another point of disruption.
It will. I mean I certainly there are different points of view at this point on the professional game and and the and the rules makers. Um, so 2030 is the first time that it has to be put in under today's rules. [snorts] So we've got a couple years here to continue to see how that debate occurs. Now, I'd imagine that you've given some thought to this, but can you imagine if we do get to that point where uh they roll back the ball? Um, and I guess they haven't decided yet, or at least it hasn't been decided finally if there will be bifurcation. Um, but wouldn't bifurcation be good for the industry?
Well, certainly a lot of other sports have decided that bifurcation's been good. Whether it's Major League Baseball and the bats, whether it's different size footballs and college and pro, there's there are a lot of different equipment changes uh from different levels of the sport. You know, I've heard every argument uh from every side of this, you know, from the the rules making authorities to the tour to high-quality amateurs to manufacturers. Uh and they all have credible arguments. Um but at the end of the day, I think um you know, we're going to end up in a situation to your point where it's going to be a a standoff and we'll see which way people go. Um I hope it doesn't come to that, but that's what it looks like right now.
Well, because I'm just thinking of a world where if you do end up with bifurcation. I know that a lot of the manufacturers against it are against it. But that seems counterintuitive to me because you'd imagine that number one, if you do have bifurcation, you're now going to start to manufacture products which are going to be on sale which weren't even on sale before and there'll be this enormous escalation of of those sales, right? But there would also be an R&D cost. Is that the is that the problem?
I think so. I think you know the the entity that drives a lot of this thinking of course is the PGA tour and at this point they're opposed to bifurcation and the roll back. Um so I think that's where the showdown will be at the end of the day. The tour versus the governing bodies.
It'll be interesting to see but as you said it's a couple years down the road. new PGA Tour CEO, Brian Rolap, and he's been very candid about the fact that he is going to respect tradition, but not going to be a slave to it. He's talked about scarcity as an important kind of piece of their strategy. Do you think if the PGA tour starts to thrive more um that that will translate into a bottom line benefit for the industry itself?
I think from a financial perspective which is where [snorts] you [clears throat] know we have some point of view um you know the more notoriety the better uh as long as it's you know continues to not be um you know so that it there's no tradition and no history and no historical relevance I think that would be a problem.
You know I'd imagine when you're evaluating a deal you're looking for data wherever you can find it. Is there anything that you can point to when you look at the golf industry that if it is an equivalent it might be useful to learn about is or is golf just a you know a total outlier?
Uh no I think it's you know in most industries the way we begin to assess you know the value and the opportunity would be to look at the what we call the TAM the total addressable market.
Mhm.
Um figure out how big it is, figure out how much of it's being consumed and and how and then where at the margin are there opportunities to expand that on a profitable basis. Um pretty simple except it's complicated in golf because it's global. It's uh real estate's expensive and so the green grass part of the game if you want to own it, operate it, you've got to have a a sense of real estate. Uh you got to have a sense of demographics which is important. Um you know the movement now down to the southeast and to Texas and others you know that's going to be a boon for those jurisdictions in in real estate and in participation. Um I think there are parts of you we think Japan and Korea still a big opportunity and penetration's quite low.
Really.
Yeah. Yeah. Um.
And they're crazy about golf over there.
They are those who are play golf are crazy about it but there aren't that many courses relative to ours. Um and they're you know there are their idea of golf would be a driving range or a simulator or something and that'll expand hopefully.
You mean that aspect of it?
That aspect of it. And and therefore, you know, it's better for the manufacturers, it's better for the advertisers, media, and everybody else. Uh the more global I think the game gets. And look, if we have an economic downturn, there will be a downturn in participation, a downturn in spend. That's just it it is a consumable and it's a recreation spend that people will adjust if times are tougher.
You know, one of the things Greg said was that, you know, there have been seems counterintuitive, but golf has become more popular, but courses have closed at a higher rate over the last few years. And on one level, that does make sense actually because there's fewer spaces available. So that means there's going to be more demand and it's pent up demand. What do you think is the biggest pothole that the game faces? You kind of answered it before, but if you're going to wave your wand and change one thing about golf uh to make it a more vibrant business, is there something that you would point to?
No, I don't think one thing in particular. I think the stratification of the opportunity to participate in the game is what's happening, right? Again, and if it's a an hour with your buddies over a beer and a simulator in the city, you know, that's okay. That's golf in some form. It isn't again 18 holes and, you know, with a caddy and keep your score and do all that, but that's okay. That part of the game, I think, is continuing to grow. Um I think the biggest as I just said I think the biggest challenge will be you know economic times go up and down and that'll be um you know you just think about the apparel part of the business the um you know they've built some really interesting and fun brands and I saw your interview with Scott Mahoney who's a good good friend and Scott's built a heck of a business and um but you know there will be saturation of market share. There will be, you know, there will be challenges for every aspect of the business if there's a downturn.
Yeah. But the the thing about golf that's interesting or most interesting to me when it when we're talking about the business of it is if you look at the industry a generation ago.
It was tiny and it seems to have exploded and now touches so many different kind of parts of life and sectors in life. Don't you think?
I think the um but if you look at you know what's happened to at least from a financial perspective technology companies and you know companies that are in space and companies that are doing things that are on the front edge those companies we we have four companies now that are over $4 trillion each of market cap. The largest company in our space on the manufacturing side is a Kushnet at 5 a.5 billion. So these are hundreds and hundreds of times bigger than the companies you know in our sector that are public. There are a bunch of real estate companies. There are a bunch of hospitality companies all of which are big and and but as a industry in general let's say it's a hundred billion dollars which is a number I heard Greg use. Um that's not that big in the scheme of the size of the you know market cap of Wall Street. So, as much as you love the game, you recognize the fact that, you know, the exuberance that kind of surrounds it at times isn't comparable to some of the other kind of comparables.
Yeah. No, you can't compare, you know, the business of golf to the business of making chips or the business of, you know, doing things that are uh very different. Nor nor but you can compare it to retail and other businesses. I think you can compare it to um you know athletic endeavors and other businesses, but it it's it is unique. I mean, we're not in a football stadium, you know, 20 times a year where we can count the heads and we know exactly, you know, what the outcome is. We got a different winner every week. We've got um you know, it's a it's it still remains an individual sport at the end of the day.
Do you see anything coming down the the pipe that uh you're excited about? What what do you think is next?
Yeah, I just think we're going to take um the integration of technology to me is very exciting. I think within a couple three years, you're going to uh go and get on a simulator. You're going to hit 10 balls. In 48 hours, you will have a bespoke ball made for you with your swing speed, your launch angle, your softness desired, and it it'll be totally bespoke to Jimmy Roberts. Second part of that is you're going to have a club that provides immediate feedback on humidity, on club head speed, on consistency of where you hit it on the face. All of that is going to get utilized to make you a set of clubs or give you the data to improve, I think, fairly dramatically. So, I think that's exciting for certainly for a tech nerd who loves golf. That's going to be a lot of fun. Um, I think just the ubiquity of data in general will make the game different and I think a lot more enjoyable to some people who really want to take it to a different learning level. Um, so I think that some that some of those developments are are really interesting. Um, and I I think you can take it, you know, a putter with automatic feedback as to, you know, how you've lined it up, uh, all of that. And that's going to put some heat again on the regulatory bodies as to how they let those type um tools get integrated into the game.
You know, one thing we didn't talk about was golf courses. I mean, there's so much focus on this off-course part of the game, [clears throat] but it becomes increasingly more difficult to create and maintain golf courses. Is there any data or any thought kind of collectively about the vitality of that part of the industry?
Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I mean I you know as the equipment and physical fitness and everything gets better obviously we've made some old courses obsolete and the question now in building new courses is are are they super long? Are they how do they utilize water? You know, what are the environmental aspects? Um are you making it too hard for the you know incoming beginning golfer to even participate or is it too expensive for those people to participate? And I think what we've seen is we've started to have people cognizant of that and try to build facilities that meet the needs of more different types of people. And so six tees instead of three, you know, um you can there is a lot of really good golf architecture where you can make it hard for the good players and you can make it very playable for the not so good players and they don't have to be completely different facilities.
So I there's a lot of thinking going into that and there's some, you know, some wonderful pieces of property being developed right now that I think are going to be terrific golf courses for the future.
And the whole sustainability piece, too.
Sustainability is going to be an important part. You know, less chemicals, less water, uh, heartier grasses. I mean, the technology of growing grass is so much better. You know, we can now do it with brackish water. We can now do it, you know, in different temperatures, in different humidity environments. What grasses are going to are going to be the best and therefore playing conditions are better. [snorts] And you can take more traffic.
Yeah. Paspalum.
Paspalum grass that grows with seawater, salt water. And if you think back, you know, a generation, maybe not much more, you know, there was one type of Bermuda grass. Basically, it was simple Bermuda. And it was a, you know, now we find ourselves at a place where there's how many strains of Bermuda and, you know, and it's so much more similar to, you know, the northern cool cool weather grasses that we see all the time.
Well, that's the, you know, the hybrids of all of these old grasses are are just making it better and better and better. There's multiple kinds of paspalum now. So.
That's mind-boggling.
Yeah. Jeff Holshshire, we're uh happy that Morgan Stanley gave you the afternoon off to come spend some time with us and be our first guest here in 1B. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Jimmy. Enjoyed it.
My big swing was probably what the high school that I chose to go to because I grew up in Staten Island and I chose to commute into this great uh Catholic [music] high school called Regis High School. That's free. You can get into it. It's free. And so I commuted every day. I took a bus to a ferry to a subway and then that on the way back. It was like an hour and a half. But it changed my whole life. I never would have met a whole group of people. I never would have, you know, gotten off Staten Island for during high school and those years having formative years in the city. And it was just such an incredible education. That was I'd say that was my kind of big swing cuz when you're 14 and you're on Staten Island, it's a little scary to just be going into the city alone every day and not know what's going to happen. And I was so glad I did. It was that was a big swing.
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So that's $10 billion. And what does that include? What's that number mean?
So that includes direct impact from golf specifically. So that's your booking a golf trip through a club, through the hospitality, everything that comes from there. That does not include the broader impact of.
Airline tickets.
Yeah. Of airline tickets of a restaurant that you might eat outside of the club or anything like that.
But but the actual numbers that are connected to the actual playing of the game are going to grow by 10 billion dollars.
It's a huge number. And that So what's interesting to me about that number too is that corporate retreats are still the largest segment there. That's about 40%. But family trips are the fastest growing segment. So that's going to be about 25% of that $10 billion are family golf trips.
And so where are these rounds of golf happening? Are they they can't be happening at private clubs, right? They've got to be resorts.
Yeah. So the growth is come is predicted to come, I should say, from managed networks. So that's Tron, Arcus, the larger companies that are managing multiple clubs. It's a shift away from the fragmented independently owned private clubs that you were just mentioning.
All right, let's shift gears here now. A piece of news that Topgolf is going to have a new executive and it seems to follow a trend because the PGA Tour hired its CEO from the NFL, the PGA of America from United Healthcare. And now Topgolf has hired its next chief executive from, wait for it.
Chuck-E-Cheese.
Isn't that what you expected?
Not exactly, but it does make a lot of sense when you think about it.
Why? Topgolf's an entertainment property, right?
Right.
Uh so is Chuck-E-Cheese. So David McKillips is the former CEO of Chuck-E-Cheese Enterprises, managed 700 of these Chuck-E-Cheese's across the country and was he implemented a membership program at Chuck-E-Cheese, first one to do that. So now he's coming over to Topgolf and it makes a lot of sense. These are both entertainment venues and it's huge for Callaway, too, because they still do own 40% of Topgolf, but they're able to disengage from it and focus fully on their tech and apparel businesses. And it's a huge year for them. They've got a big equipment launches in both drivers and putters. So now they don't really have to worry about what David and Topgolf are doing. And if they do, if it goes well, it's great for them. If it doesn't, doesn't really matter.
Yeah. Of course, the big question everybody's going to be asking is, will they be serving pizza now going forward at at Topgolf, right?
I would absolutely not be opposed to that.
I wouldn't be opposed. Who's opposed to pizza, right? Who doesn't love pizza?
Don't trust you if you don't like pizza.
Amen to that. All right, Molly. Thanks so much. And a reminder, if you want to look over Molly's shoulder and see what she's working on as she gets ready for the launch of our newsletter that's coming up this spring, we invite you to go to bigswingmedia.news and you can become part of the big swing community. One last thing, by now you'd have to be living under a rock to not know that the two-time world figure skating champion, an American man named Ilia Molinin, whose pre-Olympic odds of winning were minus 10,000. Basically the same as a number one seed in March Madness playing a number 16 seed. Malinin fell at the games not once but twice. He finished eighth. To me, it was less shocking than more just another confirmation of what I've come to believe is sports number one law of the jungle. The hardest thing to do is to win when you're supposed to. What is it they say? Coming close only matters in horseshoes and hand grenades. Now, I don't care what anybody says. I've been around long enough to understand that if you're one of the chosen ones, the joy, let's say, of winning silver is dwarfed by the despair of losing gold. Look, this clearly doesn't apply to all of us, just the special ones. And that is precisely why they're special. When he first turned professional, Tiger Woods told Curtis Strange, "Second place sucks. Third is worse." Strange laughed and said Woods would learn, but actually it was just pure honesty and the type of thing that makes the Giants such an outsized presence in history. You play the game to win, my friend, the former Jets coach Herm Edwards once famously said, "Good enough for the special people unless it amounts to one thing is never good enough. It can make for a frustrating and miserable existence. It's also a trait that often finds those afflicted in the record books. Thanks so much for joining us here on the big swing. A reminder, we're on Golf Channel every [music] Tuesday morning and on Wednesdays on YouTube. And you can also find us wherever it is that you enjoy your podcasts. Until next time, I'm Jimmy Roberts. The Big Swing with Jimmy Roberts is a production of Big Swing Media. Fred Bucher, CEO, and Jimmy Roberts, COO.