I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a brid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're checking in on the health of the golf industry as a whole. So during the COVID nineteen pandemic, recreational golf had a major moment. People were working from home, desperate to get outside, and golf was one of the few safe activities available. We saw rounds go up, we
saw equipment sales boom. We saw things in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one basically that we haven't seen since Tigermania. And the big question going into twenty twenty two was whether the golf industry could keep it up. Here to talk with me about whether it has is Greg Nathan Greg is the chief business Officer of the National Golf Foundation,
which does research on the business of the game. He's been with the NNGF for fifteen years and has a very informed view of where the golf industry has been recently and is right now. So Greg, first of all, could you give me a basic sense of what the National Golf Foundation does? I know that's a big question, but what's the kind of elevator pitch for the National Golf Foundation?
Thanks Garrett Love the Friday. Thanks for having me on. First of all, you know the NGF, We're eighty six years old right now, known primarily for being the independent and objective reporter on the vital sign to the golf economy. And just like any industry, you have to look at the look at the dynamics of supply and demand in order to figure out what's going on, what's in balance, what's out of balance, And any business that operates in golf those who like to have data and an independent
point of view on where things are. That's what the NGF is best known for. We are the association for the golf business. And what's unique is that we're the only organization that works with every vertical. So whether you're a golf course owner, an operator, you're a retailer, you make clubs and balls, irrigation, mowing equipment, chemicals, et cetera, et cetera. We work with the leaders in each one
of those spaces. So personally, when you love golf, when you're a golf crazy lunatic and you love business, I'm one of the luckiest people on earth. Excellent.
So we're talking today mainly about the impact of the pandemic on the golf industry and how the golf industry is doing as the danger of the pandemic kind of subsides. Right, we're entering a new era in golf, it feels like. And so just to set that up, could you give me an idea of what the basic condition of the golf industry was before COVID nineteen hit.
I would have answered that question pretty similarly. For let's just say the five years prior to the pandemic, I would have said that golf is competitive. What you had leading into the pandemic was since two thousand and six, you had more closures than openings on an annual basis starting in two thousand and six, and you had a stable green grass golf participation dynamic. You know, somewhere between twenty three and twenty twenty four million green grass golf participants.
So if you think about what we do in the supplying demand sides of the economy. That's the simplest way to look at it. And as it relates to rounds, the weather has the largest effect on rounds played from year to year when you have a stable base of participants. So that's really the main dynamics that we're dealing with.
You had a zero sum game to a degree in terms of golf businesses who are selling things to golfers because roughly the same number of customers out there, and Garrett, even the way that we look at it is if you say that there's twenty five million en course golfers, half of that number, you know, twelve to thirteen million spends ninety percent of the money in golf and plays over ninety percent of the rounds. So that's what I
mean when I say competitive. And then on the golf course side, we deal with a lot of folks who are suppliers to golf courses, whether they sell mowers or irrigation systems or software. And if you have a declining net number of golf facilities, you would understand why that's a competitive environment too. So that's sort of the lead in.
You know, some people have it in their heads that every business in golf should be successful, and that's this doesn't make sense relative to any economy or any industry. So the narrative of this is the other main thing I'll touch on leading into the pandemic is the narrative about golf. The media coverage of golf, and I'm not talking about golf media was extremely negative.
There's a kind of trope in not golf media, as you say, but general national media. There's a trope about how golf is dying, or at least there was before the pandemic. This was an article that would pop up every few years or so in a major publication. Where do you think that came from.
An easy one to pick, Garrett, is that the course is closing. Okay. So the fact that courses, more courses were closing than opening between two thousand and six to the present created a thing, an event that was happening in markets all around the country where, oh wow, this golf course closed, Golf must be in trouble, okay, When the truth was very different, and you won't be surprised
to know that. You know, sometimes journalists who have that they don't want to let the facts get in the way of their agenda, and so they wouldn't always call us for perspective. And the perspective that we would have given is that golf experienced this massive golf course building boom between nineteen eighty six and two thousand and five, where more than four thousand new golf courses came into
the population of places where people could play. So someone who was a developer, they would build a golf course there. Let's say Nicholas or Rhys Jones or Tom Fasia were building a lot of golf courses at that time to have an amenity with a big name to sell real estate and homes, and so they knew that they were going to sell the homes and then they were going to get out a dodge. Okay, So the due diligence required as to whether this particular market could sustain another
golf course was not the most relevant conversation. So what happens when supply and demand get out of whack. There's a natural correction that happens. Every one of those businesses cannot be successful. And most of those courses that were Bill Garrett, let's just say there wasn't a lot of accessible affordable golf built during that time. It was a lot of the same really high end product, expensive to build, expensive to maintain, high green sphae, and while the demand
for that was significant, it gets fulfilled. And so when you think this is all about that negative narrative, a lot of it can be spurred on by a course in Des Moin closing and the media picking up on that and saying, oh wow, GoF is dying, but they don't reference the fact that eight new eighteen hole golf courses were opened in Des Moines in a twenty year period without a massive increase in the number of golfers. So that's that's one thing, and then the other real quickly,
Garrett would be Look, golf is not without its baggage. Okay, So whether you think about golf being perceived by some as racist, sex, is bad for the environment, a number of things that sometimes people will touch on, Whereas the truth is three out of every four golf courses in America is open to the public. The average cost of
a round of golf is under forty dollars. So there's certain things that are skewed just because golf became a magnet for some of that negativity as a result of just the way that people think about things they're not involved with.
And I would say that those perceptions come from somewhere, There are some legitimate sources of that perception, and that perhaps golf needs to do a better job of putting forward some of the positive side of its image right, and the golf industry has not always been particularly proactive
in putting that counter narrative forward. But to get back to what you're saying about golf course development in the nineties, especially eighties, nineties, maybe early two thousands, I find it really interesting what you're saying is that we didn't necessarily overbuild golf courses in general. We overbuilt a certain kind of golf course. We overbuilt kind of high end residential golf courses. Is that accurate?
I think you could argue, just by looking at golf's equilibrium being out of whack, that there was there was an overbuild relative to satisfy having the right number of eighteen whole equivalents to satisfy demand. But what I am saying is that in order to grow golf participation, accessible and affordable golf is what is required, that what that is what helps to grow people engaging in the game
one part of that formula. And so if you're consistently building a homogeneous product, you're going to end up with a bit of an issue.
Let's fast forward to twenty twenty. Give me a sense for what happened there. Obviously, for a while, a lot of golf courses were shut down, and it was unclear where this was going. But in the summer of twenty twenty, something unexpected, at least to me, happened, and recreational golf saw a real boom in popularity. So from your perspective at the NGF, what happened there.
The way that I like to look at it is that the pandemic actually created a situation where golf's amazing intrinsic values, the things that attract people to the game, became so front and center and needed. So what I'm talking about is an activity that outdoor exercise can be an outlet for competition. It's social, and it's naturally social
distance and say you don't share equipment. And so golf showed itself for many of the great things that attracts us to it because we had this amazing opportunity where everything else shut down and NGNGF has been studying what we call latent demand. What the latent demand measure is is how many Americans who don't currently play golf have interest in playing golf on a golf course. And so that number the number one answer of people who don't currently play but are interested in playing golf on a
golf course. I mean, it's sixteen, seventeen, eighteen million Americans. So there are the interest in the game has been very high, and during the pandemic, they had more flexibility to play time wise, work from home wise, and golf was allowed to stay open because of the safety factor. So in a way, it was the perfect storm to remind people, hey, I really should get out on the golf course. It's something I can do that has all
these great qualities. So golf was very well positioned, just through the way it is the dynamics of the game.
What were the demographics of the people who came back to golf or who picked up the game for the first time during this period. Where was the demographic of that population different from what we saw previously from golf.
The best answer I can give you on that, Garrett, is there were some notable cohorts that grew during the COVID period. You know, we grew by about six hundred thousand juniors, about six hundred thousand female players, and we grew by about four hundred thousand in non Caucasian You could argue that there is the effect of top golf
and other alternative forms of the game. And what I mean by that is that we've studied off course participation for many years, and if you look at the demographics of those who go to top golf or those who play in simulators or driving ranges, it's much more of what the encourse game wants. It's younger, it's more female, it's more minority. So you could argue that the table was set nicely by people starting to be engaged in
the game in different ways from different demographics. That the pandemic, you know, was a situation that you know, I like to say, got them from the couch to the course in a way that previously they may not have done that. But when you're home and you're stir crazy and you are interested in golf and you've hit a ball before with a real club, boom, okay, here's this opportunity, and
golf is ubiquitous. Garrett there really isn't any market in the US that doesn't have a place for you to go play, and so boom, there you go.
We saw this growth during twenty twenty, or these promising signs during twenty twenty, how would you say that continued or changed in twenty twenty one, Because by the summer of twenty twenty one, vaccines were starting to become more widespread and the danger of the pandemic had kind of
tapered off a little bit. And so twenty twenty one was kind of this interesting period I think for golf, where that initial impetus to get out on the course because it was maybe one of the only activities available to you, wasn't there as much because other things were starting to come back online. So what did you make of that?
Well, I'll start with a little perspective just in terms of quantifying the activity. So in twenty two twenty, you had fifty percent half of golf courses in America closed during the real you know, March April of twenty twenty, and so we were down tracking down twenty million rounds in twenty twenty, and we ended up up sixty million rounds.
So that's a full eighty million round swing in that period of time, finishing the year up fourteen percent in twenty twenty, and that's the biggest rounds played increase, you know it rivals where we were back in the Tiger the Tiger Boom days. So if you think about the end of twenty twenty where this happened, there would have been a lot of discussion or thinking about, Wow, what's going to happen in twenty twenty one? Can we go
up more than that? And the answer ended up being yes, it went up another five percent in rounds in twenty twenty one. Now, I will tell you that in both of those years twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, the weather was extraordinarily favorable for golf. So in twenty twenty, the one I just said was up fourteen percent, we probably would have been up five six seven percent anyway.
So because golf has some positive things going for it at this point, is that why you think that there is the potential for more stability going forward, even if say we hit a recession again.
Golf is certainly not recession proof. That's proven to be the case. But you've got pretty much improved balance between supply and demand now than you had for the recession in eight oh nine. So that's that's a real plus for stability, and because golf is a pay for play activity, attracts people who have a little bit of money, and an activity like golf would be one of the last to be impacted heavily by recession and one of the first to come out when it ends.
All right, so why don't we get some details on twenty twenty two. So far, we're at the end of the summer and we've gotten a sense for what golf looks like in twenty twenty two at this point, even if the year isn't over. So how would you assess twenty twenty two in comparison to twenty and twenty one? You mentioned earlier that the weather for the past couple
of years was good at an unsustainable rate. Twenty twenty two, my sense is that in general the weather hasn't been as favorable, and that's you know, obviously not great for rounds played. But even factoring that in, how has the performance of the golf industry been this year so far?
Well as the as the organization as NGF, being the organization for businesses, I can tell you that the businesses feel quite good about twenty twenty two in terms of their performance. Rounds have been down because the weather has not been as good. Rounds are down about four percent roughly year to date, but t sheets have been so full, so much more full than they have been that the courses, as I said, have been able to get higher rates,
and private clubs have been very heavily utilized. So the people who work at the golf course, Garrett, have been really busy, and I would say they're a bit tired. And so the fact that rounds might be modulating a little bit for some of those people, it's a little bit of a breath while they're still making some money. Now. Something near and dear to both FRIEDA Egg's part and my part are what's going on with golf courses. And we have noticed recently the last couple years the trajectory
of the closures has really flattened out. When we look at our estimates through the year of the number of closures that we'll have by year's end, it's significantly lower. We're tracking to be around ninety five eighteen whole equivalent closures this year, which would be the fewest since two thousand and five. The closures now are also quite different than they were. The closures were a natural correction from the imbalance of supply and demand, but that's pretty much
played its way out. So the interesting thing is that the closures now, they're not generally sob stories. They are situations where as we say, the dirt is worth more than the grass, So it's generally going to be a property, a golf course that's not as competitive in their local market. You know, they've built five, six, eight, twelve new courses in the past thirty years in these markets, and some of them they're just not They're not going to be
competitive anymore. And eighty plus percent of golf courses are independently owned and operated. So the Johnson family who owned a particular golf course for the last fifty years, finally can sell that golf course to a developer. And so even though we may have ninety five closures, when you have sixteen thousand golf courses, that's a really tiny amount. And they're not all bad stories. In fact, most of them are good stories.
Now, hey there, wanted to pop in real quick to talk about something that's going on in the Frida Egg Pro shop. We have our new fall line of merchandise coming out next week Tuesday, September thirteenth. We're going to have vests, long sleeve t shirts, performance sweatshirts, new winter hats, drink where tumblers, hoodies, quarter zips, all manner of kind
of fall themed stuff. So if you want to get something new, then go to proshop dot Thefrida egg dot com and check out our fall line starting on Tuesday, September thirteenth. Okay, that's it. Back to the interview. Okay, Well, I'd like to get into golf courses and golf course development a little bit later, but before that, I'd like to find out a little more about kind of how
golf course operators can go about sustaining interest in the game. Obviously, twenty twenty twenty twenty one was a big moment for golf course operators to just bring new people into the fold. People are arriving at the golf course who haven't been there in a while, or who have perhaps never been there. And now the big thing for golf course operators is
how do we keep those people coming back? Right? How can we provide an experience that is such that those people, even if other activities open up to them, they choose to come back to golf. So, just in general, what has been your standard advice to golf course operators about how to improve the experience so that they keep bringing new people to the game and bringing back people who came back during the pandemic.
Golf's front door, and I'm discussing the US is the United States sixteen thousand golf courses, fourteen thousand facilities as golf's front door. I have not historically been particularly strategic or aggressive at selling golf versus other forms of recreation, and selling golf doesn't have to mean in the traditional sense of sales. But what it does have to be is golf needs to compete on a basis of being a fun thing to do for people who are not
already in the franchise, who are not already hooked. So if you're running a golf course, lots of people in the golf business during these these these surging, surging times, you know they look in the in the mirror. We all can look in the mirror like, wow, we're really handsome, Like business is just amazing. We're doing an exceptional job. But the reality is we need to use times like
these to reinvest in the product. And unless you're Seminole or Pine Valley or Mirefield Village, you need to compete. And that means competing for recreation time, and that means what are the amenities? What are the ways that I can create pleasing, positive experiences for people who are not already hooked on the game. And so those who are at golf's front door, this is a call, okay, this is a call to them to look at their operation while they have some money and think about what's going
to happen when things are not as good? Am I looking at my property and how to make it competitive versus the other places and the other forms of recreation? That that's our view? What can I do to make my business more fun? To it's more fun to be there?
Right? And so speaking of entry points to the game, it's not just green grass facilities. What is the importance of places like top golf or or you know, things
like simulator golf to getting people into the game. I mean to be honest, in the past, I've been a bit of a skeptic about whether those things would indeed help help grow the game, to use the old tired phrase, but it seems like you might believe that there is a genuine connection between people who go to a top golf facility and people who might be interested in going out on a golf course at some point. So could you maybe make that connection for me?
Of course, first of all the things that have been trotted out over the years, Garrett, in terms of why why doesn't golf grow as much as it as much as it should? It always comes down to people saying it takes too long, it costs too much, and it's too difficult. Well, starting more than ten years ago, we started studying that a little bit differently. We started studying what does it take for someone to get hooked on the game. And it comes down to it comes down
to four things. And it won't surprise you and maybe cliche, but each of those four things are the most important because they're most closely associated with the perception that golf is fun and what I mean by that, And I'll talk about these two areas comfort and competence. And I'm going to take competence first. So the two keys and competence as to why someone would get hooked, why would you come into the game. The first one is I
play well enough to enjoy the game. It doesn't mean I shoot in the nineties or the eighties or the seventies. I can get the ball around. I play well enough to enjoy the game. And the second one is I get shot euphoria at least one or two times every time I go out okay, So that's part. The other side that the comfort part, which is really important, is I feel comfortable in the golf course environment or I
feel and I feel comfortable with other golfers. So this is where golf's front door could do a much better job. It's not while time, money and difficulty are really there. Real the bigger reason why golf hasn't grown in the way that it should is because golf is so intimidating.
Is because people have a fear of embarrassment. Golf's orthodoxies get in the way from a mindset standpoint, and so if you think about the growth, the huge growth in top golf and golf entertainment and simulator play in different ways, those are less intimidating ways that someone can engage in this game. And there isn't an activity or a sport in the world, Garrett that wouldn't beg Borrow and steal to have this. You could say it's a farm team for the big leagues, you know, it's a way to
and look, they run their own businesses. They should be and are in the business to make money. They're not in the business necessarily to grow the green grass game. But if you think about this is an opportunity for someone to hit a real ball with a real club and feel shot euphoria. It's less intimidating, it's technology, it's gaming,
and it's all about fun. And so the growth here top golfer example, it's fifty to fifty golfers and non golfers, so that in itself you've got someone who took this bridge from this is a bridge from the couch to the course. And someone who goes to top golfers plays in simulator because it's fun and less intimidating, might hit some good shots, might get a feel for the game and say, you know what, I think I could go
and try this on a real course. So the issue then becomes are they entering a system that's well equipped to receive them and give them a great experience. And that's where the NGF really spends a lot out of time and thinking and money, trying to prove how that should be done.
In addition to alternate ways to experience shot euphoria, as you've put it a couple of times hitting the ball. In addition to those possible ways to get into the game, do you think that golf on television, that professional golf is an important potential entry point for people as well for.
Any sport to grow. We've had different points in time as the NGNGF where we've looked at international markets, because we maintain the database of every golf course in the world, where we've tried to put together what are the underpinnings, what are the things that must be in place for a golf to grow in a country, and having heroes is one of those things, having people that you see in our case, Look, the United States is the eight hundred pound gorilla, the biggest market forty five percent of
the world's golf courses or in the United States, Well, we've got plenty of professional golf heroes to watch on television.
And so something like Live Golf right, this new disruptor league that's not yet on television, but that certainly poses something of a competitive threat to the PGA Tour I'm not exactly sure how I feel yet about the prospects of live golf as it relates to golf on television and the importance of that to keeping people interested in
the game. But I wonder if you've thought at all about that, like what, you know, if you've kind of looked into the crystal ball at all and thought, like, what could it look like if live golf really does take a big chunk out of the PGA Tour, how will that affect the way that people experience professional golf on TV and therefore the way that a lot of people might get interested in the game in the first place.
You know, Garrett, there is already so much professional golf, so much competitive golf available to golf fans, and by the way, there are is a much larger population of people who engage in the game, whether it's watching it, reading it, or playing it. And playing it is what we care about, that's what our organization is all about. So from a recreational golf standpoint, I can't say it's going to have that, you know, more more exposure, more
opportunity to see professional golf. I don't know if it's going to have any significant impact on recreational golf with doctor Bettett's our CEO. I've had conversations over the years about, you know, the popularity, for example, of Tiger Or we'll talk about how popular Frank Sinatra is as a singer, and we may love Frank Sinatra and you know, listen to his music back in the day, and golf is growing,
and we might sing in the shower. But just because we like Frank Sinatra or we like Tiger Woods doesn't necessarily mean we're going to go and play the recreational game and be like, hmm, I might try it. I might try singing because I like Eddie Vedder, you know, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be a singer.
That's a reassuring answer to me, because I think that sometimes people overestimate the portion of the health of the game that professional televised golf accounts for. And we often do this thing where we take the temperature of the game as a whole by taking the temperature of professional golf. And I think that what you're saying here is sort of reassuring in the sense that golf is a lot
bigger than just the professional game. So if the professional game is suffering that doesn't necessarily mean that the industry as a whole, that recreational golf what we all actually care about in the end, doesn't necessarily mean that that's suffering as well. And so I think that that's a good thing to keep in mind throughout all of this.
Golf being cool, whatever that means, golf being ubiquitous, golf being on television all the time, it certainly is a positive, you know, for the recreational game. It is from the recreational golfer from whom all blessings flow as it relates to the golf industry that I serve.
All right, so why don't we get into golf course development. You've talked little bit about the recent history of golf course development, the way that the industry sort of overbuilt a certain kind of course in the nineties and the eighties, nineties, early two thousand's, residential golf kind of got a little bit too big, and the demand just couldn't sustain that supply. And so I'm really curious about where golf course development is going next, because golf course closures are continuing. As
you've said, they have certainly slowed down. So I guess the simple question is do we need more golf courses, And if we need more golf courses, what kinds of golf courses do we need.
It's a really fun subject in certain ways and not in others. So you're if you're Toro or Rainbird and someone who supplies golf courses around the world, we just let's just think about the United States. We're not likely to go beyond twenty new eighteen whole equivalents in the
United States in any particular year. So there are some really cool things happening out there for destination golf, things that are getting built because they're special or you know, there's a lot of discussion about par three and short courses being built because there are so many high profile ones like you know at Pinehurst, at the Preserve, Abandon the Sandbox, the sandbox at Sand Valley, and these are really intelligent things for these properties to do, because if
somebody arrives with their party at four o'clock in the afternoon,
they have something amazing to go and do. But in general, there isn't there isn't a ton of construction going on, and the construction that is happening, the projects that are happening are generally going to be things that are and I'm talking about new They're going to be for the most part, special places that have their own draw But every market in the US has supply, you know, So there's not going to be a general a general build that's going to continue to happen at any level around
the world. Is where a lot of the focus has gone in terms of building building courses. Back around twenty twelve, a number of the really big companies, the global companies in golf, they came to the NGNGF and say, hey, can you do what you do with the database of golf courses in the US around the world, because they it was becoming very obvious. I told you, two thousand and six is the first year of more closures than openings. And these companies started to realize, you know what, our
growth isn't going to come from the United States. We need to have more tools to figure out what where are we going to grow. So like Vietnam, for example, is really fast, you know, fast growing in terms of the building of new golf courses, but seventy five eighty percent of golf supply around the world is in twenty countries. Yet there's two hundred and six countries that have a
golf course. So it's a real interesting time. But you asked about development, mostly it's going to happen overseas, and there's going to There has been a tremendous amount of investment in upgrading the physical plants of golf courses here in the US, So the number of renovations happening that's quite significant. I think we estimate that in the past five years more than nine billion dollars has been invested in significant renovation work at golf courses in the United States, right.
And this is something that Andy and I have talked about a lot, because quite a bit of that movement towards renovation and restoration has happened at private clubs, right, just as quite a bit of the new golf course development has been at these high end, premiere destination resorts. And so something that we've discussed a lot is when is this trend going to really start to hit public golf, local golf in a big way. And so I'm curious
about your thoughts on that. You know, is some of this investment coming to the lower end or to the middle tier of courses.
It is, and it already has been. It's just not as high profile. But the reality is that we would estimate that in the past five years close to eighty percent of public facilities have had some kind of renovation done. Eighty five percent of private have had some sort of meaningful renovation done. And it doesn't mean like gill Hants has come in and redesigned all eighteen holes and that sort of high profile work. It is investing in your
course to be competitive. You know, you still, unless you're abandoned Dune's or you're a real high attractive resort property, you're competing against the courses in your trade area. Golf is local for the most part, so how are you going to compete in any business? You got to invest in your product and make it better so that people want to come to your restaurant versus the other one.
So what has the character of this kind of improvement at the public and local level looked like. If it hasn't looked like the big, ambitious Gilhants restoration that also includes you know, precision air systems under the greens and things that just frankly cost a lot of money, then what have the improvements at public courses generally looked like.
Uh, they're gonna be bunker work, They're gonna be new turf, They're gonna be work on work on the greens. You know, there's always going to be you know, you can keep a golf course open and fix t's and what the NNGF tracks, Garrett, are courses that close a minimum of nine holes for a minimum of three months. Okay, So our standard for renovation, it's a high standard. You got to close some holes for a period of time as as we measure it. We measure those more significant renovations.
Got it. I guess that my interest, you know, since on the Frida Egg we often talk about golf course design, and I'd love to see a lot of public courses kind of upgrade their designs and make their courses more
fun to play. I know this is hard to see from the kind kind of ten thousand foot view that you have to take when you're assessing the golf course industry as a whole, But do you see a possibility that more public courses will kind of go and introduce some fun design concepts into their renovation so just you know, rather than just getting new turf for the greens or the tea boxes, our courses getting more interested in what architecture can bring to their facility.
I believe that they. I believe that they have. There are certain things that you and I both know are happening, Like Seth Rayner right now, everything that Seth Rayner ever did is being looked at and like, oh wow, we need to make sure that we are paying very close attention to this amazing classic architecture and making sure that if I own that property designed by Seth Rayner, that I'm going to make sure that I get to take
advantage of what was there. But they don't necessarily think that that means that we're going to see a huge numbers of high budget complete architecture renovation happening. The numbers at that threshold that I described earlier, they're pretty small. I mean that happens between one hundred and two hundred times a year at fourteen thousand goth facilities sixteen thousand courses, Right, It's pretty small in terms of going through that type of renovation.
Well, I mean there's a major cost associated with it, not just for the work itself, but also the closure of a portion of or all of a course. That's a huge decision to make. And you have to be convinced that it's going to pay off in the end. And so I guess the hope is that facilities see some kind of advantage in introducing cool design concepts to their course, that that actually improves their business to the extent that they're willing to take on some of that risk.
I suppose. Yeah. You know, one of my golf Golf editorial golf writer idols, George Pepper, was an editor of Golf magazine for twenty five years. He wrote an article somewhat recently, I think it was published in Links magazine that this whole idea of the name architects and people beyond the golf course junkies like we are to even be made aware of that is a relatively recent phenomenon.
You know, the fact that mackenzie is a hero, or McDonald or Rayner, you know, these classic classical old architects. People hadn't paid attention much to that except for maybe the past, you know, twenty thirty years.
That's true. But the hope is that everybody pays attention to how fun the golf course is that they're playing, even if they don't attribute the fun that they're having to the design of the golf course, even if it's just like, wow, that was that was kind of cool. I kind of want to come back to that place and play around again, even if they don't say that it's architecture that created that experience for me. If they're having fun, then that's the whole point, right, yes.
And the trend that we've all seen, those of us who are golf course nuts is an emphasis on fun absolutely. All right.
Well, Greg, thank you so much for sitting with me for this interview. There's a lot of really good information there. Where can people find more of the National Golf Foundation's work? Like, where where can people kind of dig in more to the research that you guys are doing.
Thank you, Thanks for asking. NNGF dot org. Is the is the easiest way for someone to go and take a look at the type of information that we publish. You know, at our core, we're a five oh one c membership organization. There's quite a bit of industry research
that's in the vault that is exclusive for our members. However, we do publish significant free content in what's called Fortnite and the last you know, every Fortnite issue we've published since we started doing it at the beginning of the pandemic is available at NGF dot org in the left
side column. So that's the primary way. But one of the things that most people don't know about the NGF, Garrett, is that we also do a tremendous amount of three quarters of our business is in private work that we do to help golf companies compete, you know, whether it's private research or digital or email marketing work. I spend a lot of my time on that, along with our team being experts on the golf industry and helping businesses be more successful.
All right, thank you so much, Greg, Thank you, Garrett. This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was edited by Meg Atkins. If you've been enjoying the pod, by all means, leave a rating and review in iTunes. Just doing that will help us find new listeners. The Frida Egg is an independent shop if you don't have the backing of a big corporation, so we rely on you, the listener, to spread the word, which all of you have done wonderfully so far. Thank you for listening and we'll see you again next week.