Flawed stats lead to flawed conclusions
There’s an old saying that suggests that there are three sides to every story: your version, my version and the truth. Along the way some math geek added a fourth version – statistics, with the suggestion that they represent the indisputably correct conclusion. As we all know, stats lie.
An infamous press release a couple of years ago relied on stats to make a point about golf participation in Canada. The Ipsos Read poll found that approximately 94 million rounds of golf were being played in this country annually. Starting with a relatively low number of consumers and extrapolating the anecdotal findings lead to this astronomical number. If it were true, course owners would be pretty happy people and employers would be chaining people to desks.
More recently, Golf Canada used a statistical report to determine how large the market might be for their membership drive. Finding that there are nearly six million golfers in Canada and only 360,000 of them are current Golf Canada members, the future looked pretty bright for their marketing campaign.
With just 10,000 new members added to the Golf Canada roster in the past year, the results certainly can’t be put in the success category. And the departure of Peter Beresford as COO and the recent exit by Steve Carroll as a regional Membership Director can’t be just written off as personal career changes either. They are symptoms of a much larger problem.
Beresford came to Golf Canada after a long career at McDonalds. Some will argue that marketing is the same, it’s just the product that’s different. Well, marketing hamburgers and golf memberships is not the same. People eat at McDonalds because it’s cheap, consistent and convenient. The bottom line is people have to eat and if you’re in a hurry, Mickey D’s is a realistic choice.
Nobody really needs a Golf Canada membership, at least certainly not in the same way we need to eat. For competitive amateur golfers, they do need a handicap but for the bulk of golfers there is precious little that Golf Canada can offer them that they need. Beresford and company decided to tart up the Golf Canada membership with perceived benefits such as lower insurance premiums, travel discounts and discounted golf rounds.
Most people see these kinds of promotions daily. There isn’t a credit card company, travel company, insurance company, phone company or bank that isn’t bombarding us incessantly about how we can save and get special benefits by joining their latest program. Much of it is annoying, most of it is bogus and none of it really benefits you.
Unlike McDonalds, where you could always offer a trinket to get the kids to bully their parents into the store, there is no magic hook to make people buy a Golf Canada membership. There are just three reasons people have one: they get one whether they want it or not because they are members of a private club; they need a handicap to compete in provincial or national amateur competitions; or they want to support the good things that the RCGA does.
So now it comes back to stats. Currently there are 360,000 Golf Canada members. Using the estimate of six million golfers in the country, that’s only 6%. Seems like a lot of room to grow.
However, that six million figure is made up of occasional golfers, core golfers and avid golfers. Occasional golfers are those people who play 1-3 rounds per year. They make up almost 55% of the total. Unless they want to help Golf Canada out of the goodness of their heart, they don’t need a membership.
Core golfers, depending on whose studies you believe, play anywhere from 8-20 rounds per year. That works out to something less than one round per week over our short golf season. No need for a Golf Canada membership amongst these folks either although more of them may be sympathetic to Golf Canada’s objectives. The core golfers make up another 35% of the total.
That leaves just 10% for the avid golfers – those of us who play in excess of 20 rounds per year. For private and semi-private club members and addicts, that number likely exceeds 50 rounds.
So, out of six million golfers in Canada, the number of people who can most benefit from having a Golf Canada membership is down to 600,000. Sixty percent already have one. Of the remainder, one could argue that a lot of them play many rounds of golf but don’t ever play competitively where they might need an official handicap. They don’t need a new insurer or travel discounts either but I think we’ve already covered that.
Sixty percent of any market sounds pretty good but getting any significant part of that other forty percent will be very tough. There is no compelling reason to make them join. One answer lies in turning more occasional and core golfers into avid golfers, another very tough proposition.
Perhaps the best solution is a long term one that can start now. The Golf in Schools program is one of the most successful ever at introducing new people to golf. The kids aren’t big spenders yet but if they develop a love for the game early, they will be the avid golfers of the future.
Golf Canada needs to give every kid who goes through the Golf in Schools program a membership card. Don’t charge them anything for it but attach some real benefits to it – benefits that will get them out to a golf course and something they can get excited about. If the kids get excited their parents will get involved too. It works for McDonalds.
The kid’s card should definitely have an online aspect to it that ensures they’re part of a community. That seems to work for Facebook, gaming sites and others.
By the time these kids reach adulthood, having a Golf Canada membership will be an accepted part of playing the game and something they want to have rather than something they may or may not need.
By expanding the statistical base to include a new market, Golf Canada can target a whole new segment that will have both short and long term results. Besides if they give away a quarter million cards to kids, their stats will look better too.
It’s all about winning
American Paul Simson recently won the Canadian Senior Amateur by a whopping 15 strokes over Graham Cooke and a field of not quite good enough Canadian golfers. Simson is a 58 year old insurance agent from Raleigh, NC who has amassed a very impressive amateur record with multiple victories in state ams, mid ams and senior events.
The presence of foreign players in the Canadian Senior field is nothing new and the record shows that in addition to Simson’s victory, David Lane of England and Bud Bradley of California also won the event in the past ten years. So what you might ask?
This year the RCGA announced that there would be a concerted effort to make the field stronger in each of our national amateur championships by inviting the best international players to compete. The theory is that having Canadians play against the top 100 ranked players in the world will help prepare our top players for international competition and perhaps an eventual pro career. That’s certainly sound thinking but it really only applies to a handfull of the top Canadian players in each tournament. For the rest of the field it’s a slap in the face.
There is one reason and one reason only that top foreign players come here to compete – they see a chance to win. And winning at any level provides a psychological edge to doing it again. Opening our national championships to foreign players denies our own players the opportunity to gain winning experience.
Remember a few years ago a lot of criticism was levelled at Michelle Wie for competing against the men on the Nationwide and PGA Tours. “Learn to compete and win in state and national amateur events before you take on the world’s best”, they said. Wie won the US Public Links Championship at age 16 but then began a wild ride where she bounced amongst the men’s and woman’s pro tours and won nothing and often didn’t even make the cut. Finally after winning an LPGA Tour event in Mexico last year and then the CN Canadian Women’s Open this year is Wie finally starting to capitalize on her enormous potential. Most experts will say that her ability to win was stunted by not competing and learing to win at the junior and adult amateur levels.
If that’s true then is it not more beneficial to Canadian golfers to provide them with a chance to win their own national championship as a stepping stone to international competition or a pro career? Most of our top amateurs attend US colleges so they compete against the best in the world for four years anyway. Surely they don’t need another local event with essentially the same collegiate players they see all year.
Everybody in the golf industry talks about trying to grow the game. One proven way is to produce winners which provides belief and encouragement to others. The trickle down effect or pyramid of influence creates interest at evey level and eventually influences even non-golfers to have an interest in the game as a casual observer, then maybe a fan and eventually a player. If all the winners are unknowns from another country, there won’t be much trickling down to the grassroots level here.
Dan Halldorson, a member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and a two time winner on the PGA Tour was congratulated many years ago for finishing as the low Canadian in the Canadian Open. It was reported that he responded “that’s like being the tallest midget.”
In other words, being low Canadian means squat unless you win.
It stands to reason that a country the size of the United States can produce a lot more top amateurs than Canada – more people, longer golf seasons, more resources. If we open our national amateur championships up to the Top 100 players in the world and many of them come here, it won’t be long before Americans dominate the leaderboards.
And that’s not good for Canadian golf.
Thanks Bob
The Canadian national inferiority complex kicks into high gear this week as pundits and fans across the country assess the field for this week’s RBC Canadian Open and ask themselves, why won’t Tiger come back? Doesn’t he like Canada? Why doesn’t Phil ever come here to play? Where are all the top players? Why won’t they play in our national championship?
The answers are as varied as the players themselves. There are larger issues like the unfortunate schedule that places our Open right after “The Open” and even though RBC Canadian Open Tournament Director Bill Paul does everything possible short of personally going to Britain and kidnapping players, some just don’t want to play golf the week after a major. Bill does send his personal jet over to provide Sunday night ferry service back to Canada for the willing participants and occasional freeloaders but even that courtesy isn’t enough to entice some of the pampered class.
The argument that the players are independent contractors gets kind of tiring. The guy who cuts my grass is an independent contractor too but if he doesn’t hack my weeds on a weekly basis, he’ll be more independent and less contractor real quick. Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, the top players, and that really means Tiger, Phil and a few others, will realize that if they don’t support ALL of the tournaments on a semi-regular basis, some will vanish for lack of sponsor support. Naturally that won’t affect Tiger’s bank balance but there are 143 other players on a weekly basis who depend on those second and third tier events. And there are fans and communities and charities too who need those events for a multitude of reasons.
Anyway, the purpose of this blog is not to lament the absence of a few top players from the 2009 RBC Canadian Open. In fact, the field looks to be one of the strongest in years. Among the top ranked players who will tee it up at Glen Abbey this week are Anthony Kim, Sean O’Hair, Retief Goosen, Camilo Villegas, Trevor Immelman, Luke Donald, Bubba Watson, J.B. Holmes and Dustin Johnson. Fan favourite Fred Couples and tabloid phenom John Daly will be there as will Canadian PGA TOUR stars Mike Weir and Stephen Ames.
Sometimes in all the hoopla about which top players will or won’t be there and who has a valid reason and who doesn’t, we forget about the guys who have been loyal to the Canadian Open for a long time. A few years back I was standing near the 10th tee at The Abbey and noticed Billy Mayfair sitting under a tree near by. Nobody was near him and he wasn’t due to tee off for another thirty minutes or so so I moseyed on over and struck up a conversation. Turns out Billy just wanted to get away from the practice area and all the ruckus and enjoy a bit of the tournament.
We spoke for about ten minutes and among other things he told me that he really enjoyed coming to Canada and loved the atmosphere of our national championship. He asked me as many questions as I asked him. Most of his were about Canada, our history and places to visit. For PGA Tour players, those are pretty unusual questions. Typically, if they do ask you any questions and it is rare, the questions are, “do you know any good restaurants nearby?” or “is there any nightlife around here?” (That last question usually gets phrased a bit more graphically too.)
After my conversation with Mayfair I did some checking. Billy first came to the Canadian Open back in 1989, tied for 70th spot and earned $1,773. Following up for 2009, the record shows that Mayfair will play his 15th Canadian Open this year. Billy is one of the nicest guys on Tour and has compiled a solid record over his career, yet rarely gets mentioned when the field is released for any event.
Likewise a few others who have been staunch supporters of the Canadian Open over the past 20 to 25 years. How about Billy Andrade, 1998 Bell Canadian Open champion, who began his pro career in 1987 and this year will be making his 18th trip north of the border for our Open. Or 2010 American Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin who will be making this year’s Open his 19th in the past 25 years.
Mark Calcavecchia used the 2005 Bell Canadian Open at Shaugnessey GC in Vancouver to kick-start a career that had been on the skids for a few seasons. His win there marked just one of twenty appearances that Calc has made in the Canadian Open over a 28 year career. He’ll be at Glen Abbey this year too in spite of four rounds on the grueling Turnberry course last week.
As far as I can tell though, the longest streak at the Open belongs to 2003 Champion Bob Tway who will play his 24th this year. Bob first came to the Canadian Open in 1985 and has played every year since except 1987. What happended in 87 Bob? His streak of 22 consecutive Opens including this year is incredible and perhaps now even more so since Tway became eligible for the Champions Tour this past spring, yet still wants to play a full scedule on the regular Tour.
Apart from an exciting playoff win over Brad Faxon in 2003 at Hamilton, Tway’s Canadian Open record is solid but unspectacular. Therefore, outside of the past champion mention, he doesn’t get a lot of press and isn’t one of the marquee players that everyone talks about. Bob’s a quiet guy from Oklahoma with a wife and two kids. He has eight career victories including one major. (1986 PGA Championship where he chipped in from the front bunker to skewer Greg Norman one more time). Recently his greater claim to fame has come from caddying for his son Kevin as he begins his golf career.
All in all, Bob Tway is a pretty regular guy who just happens to be a strong supporter of the Canadian Open. For that, I think he, along with Billy Andrade, Billy Mayfair, Corey Pavin, Mark Calcavecchia and probably some others I’ve missed, deserve special recognition. If you get out to Glen Abbey this week, let them know that we appreciate them. For that matter, let all the players know that we appreciate them. They deserve it.
Executive Dysfunction
Rumour has it that the RCGA is close to naming a new Executive Director. I don’t know who it is but I’m already discouraged. Don’t take that the wrong way. There are good people out there capable of running a national sports association and I’m sure the new Executive Director will be top-notch. However, it sure looks like the new ED is being put into a hapless situation where everyone is counting on him (or her) to fix everything that is wrong with the RCGA.
During the search process, not once did I hear anybody talking about changing the culture of the RCGA, establishing a new mandate or altering the structure so it can be more effective. Is the new ED expected to be an agent of change ie a short term guy who shakes things up, gets things moving in the right direction, then takes off for another challenge? Or is he supposed to be another manager – someone who pours oil on the water and carries on for a 20 year period. We all know that change agents make lousy managers and good managers rarely shake things up.
Here’s a short list of a few key items that will be facing the guy in the fancy office on the 2nd floor at Golf House:
1. Find a title sponsor for the Canadian Open or figure out an alternative way to makie it work. The Open is the single most important thing the RCGA does. It makes a connection with golfers all across the country, showcases golf in Canada internationally and is a defining moment in Canadian golf every year. Not to mention it helps fund a lot of other RCGA programs.
2. Establish a mandate for the RCGA that makes sense. Figure out what it is that the RCGA is supposed to do. As it is now the RCGA is into all sorts of areas that conflict with their members and other golf organizations in the country, the Skins loyalty program being the latest. Then extract the RCGA from all businesses and programs that aren’t part of the core objectives.
3. Figure out how to effectively represent and communicate with all golfers in the country. If the RCGA is the “governing body of amateur golf in Canada” then the RCGA needs to connect with golfers on the East and West coasts who feel like the Association is an Ontario-centric body. The RCGA also needs to figure out how to connect with the 5 million golfers who aren’t RCGA members. (Of the roughly 5-6 million golfers in Canada, only 400,000 are members of the RCGA).
Hopefully the Board has used the past four months to come up with a plan to resolve these and many other issues and are just waiting for the new guy to start so he can execute the plan. If they’re waiting for the new guy to develop a plan, the why does the RCGA need thirty Directors?
The new Executive Director will have one chance to make a great first impression. To do that he’ll need to come out swinging - demonstrate decisive leadership, make some bold announcements and reach out to other organizations that have been trampled by the RCGA to date. If he comes out with one of those wishy washy statements about looking forward to meeting the staff, finding out where the washroom is and working with the Board to develop a meaningful plan moving forward, then golfers all across the country will throw up their hands in frustration. I know I would.
Peter Mumford is the Editor and Publisher of Fairways Magazine in Toronto. Fairways is intended for avid golfers and this blog site is an extension of that same philosophy - we don't dumb it down for the uninformed!