worth reading Who's Optimistic?

“For the first time in a long time,” says the opening line of a story in the Winston-Salem Journal, “there's optimism in the golf industry.”

That's good to hear, and a sentiment I generally agree with. My conversations with people in the golf business tell me that the vast majority are certainly more hopeful and more confident than they were last year. Without question, they're decidedly more upbeat than they were during the black days of 2009.

Unfortunately, the Journal's article left me asking a lot of questions about exactly where the golf industry stands today.

The paper bases the entire foundation of its article on a prepared statement from Rhett Evans, the CEO of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. Evans contends that increased attendance at the industry's most important trade shows -- the PGA Merchandise Show and the Golf Industry Show, both of which were held in recent weeks -- suggest that happy days will soon be here again.

“There is definitely a different feeling than what prevailed last year at this time,” Evans said in a press release issued by the Golf Industry Show. “From a qualitative and quantitative perspective, the Golf Industry Show was quite successful.”

This sounds good until you consider that the attendance at the Golf Industry Show was down significantly in 2009 and 2010. The traffic at the event really had nowhere to go but up.

Despite that, I'm not convinced that the actual attendance really was up.

According to the Golf Industry Show's statistics, the event in 2009 had an “overall attendance” of 17,151, while the event in 2010 brought 16,156 through the turnstiles. I'm no mathematician, but that looks like a decline of about 1,000 to me.

In 2011, according to a statement issued earlier this month, the show recorded a “total attendance” of 14,781. This looks like another decline to me, but the GIS calls it “a 4 percent increase over 2010.”

Again, I can hardly balance a checkbook. Here's a link to the page with the post-show press releases from 2010 and 2011.

Let me post a simpler set of numbers that may give a clear-cut indication of where we are in the golf industry today. The press releases also say that GIS 2010 attracted 657 exhibitors, while GIS 2011 attracted 551.

Silly me, I read these numbers as a decline of about 100 exhibitors. The Golf Industry Show calls them “support to the growing wave of optimism that the golf industry is beginning to shake out of its doldrums.”

There's a truth hidden somewhere in all these numbers, but for now, at least, I can't find it.