When a good friend dies, one mourns. The Annual Reporting Service of PGA PerformanceTrak has long been a great ally in assisting PGA Professionals to understand the economics of the business of golf by providing valuable benchmarks. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have been updated since 2013 leading one to the conclusion that this awesome service is about to die.
Inquiries to the PGA garnered this response, “Perhaps there was some confusion about the Annual Operation reports availability. They were updated in August. If you hear anything similar from a PGA Member, please have them contact us directly.” We have had multiple PGA professionals attempt to access the 2014 reports to no avail. There was no response to our email follow up to PGA Headquarters on December 28, 2015 for clarification until yesterday when we received an email, “Not sure who provided this to you or when, but that appears to be an old screen shot.” It is not. Click here to view what was on the PGA PerformanceTrak site yesterday. Even if the 2014 reports were posted in August 2015 that multiple PGA professionals can not locate, the relevance of the reports is limited by how dated the information is.
Note less than 1,600 golf courses participated in 2013 in this annual service. Benchmarking by State or PGA Sections often produced no results limiting the effectiveness of this service.
Interviews with Arizona and Colorado PGA Professionals indicated that it is nearly impossible to find an accurate, competitive set of golf courses due to low participation in PGA Performance Trak’s monthly key performance indicators.
If these services were to expire, I would mourn their passing. I realize that the chasm will be filled in time with the efforts of Club Benchmarking and its Links Insight affiliate, and the ORCA Reports – all of which present great insights to the sage golf course manager.
