Amazing day and time with more golfers playing than ever
Posted by Nick Piastowski March 18, 2023
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Four on the weekend is still relevant.
So it looks like it’s midday grouping on Wednesday.
That’s what the new one says Stanford University study on working from home. Among his findings was that the WFH caused a boom in golf—and did so abruptly, perhaps at an unconventional time.
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We’ll get to some data in a second because the three quotes from the study sum it up nicely.
“You can’t tell a week from a weekend,” a Phoenix consulting manager said in January of this year. “The place is completely full all the time every day. Toward evening, it is packed.”
“We were going to renovate the course in 2021, but golf has become so popular that we have postponed it,” a golf course manager said in February. “Every course, every minute is now filled for the entire week, no more quiet Wednesdays.”
“I think a colleague of mine was answering Zoom calls from a golf course,” a California tech lead said in January. “He had his audio and video muted, but one day while he was talking, I heard someone talking about the fairway and hitting.”
You can laugh at the last quote. It’s funny. But maybe you know someone who has done something similar. Or they did it themselves.
According to the study:
“Trips to golf courses” have increased since the pandemic. One of the most notable numbers: in August 2022, the number of trips increased by 52% compared to August 2019.
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— The increase was caused by playing golf in the middle of the week. In 2019, there were 11,400 rides on Tuesdays, 10,800 on Wednesdays, and 15,000 on Thursdays. In 2022? There were 25,800, 26,200 and 26,300, respectively.
– The increase on weekdays occurred during the day – the peak increase of 278% (!) occurred at 16:00 on Wednesday.
– Friday, Saturday and Sunday were popular in 2019, so there was less growth – Saturday 2022 was actually below the level of 2019.
In data collection, the study identified 3,400 golf courses in the US through AI satellite imagery analysis and used anonymous GPS data on vehicles and phones to determine trips to golf courses. The study also showed that these WFHs played golf as a break.
The presentation of the study also asked this question:
“So playing golf during WFH is bad?”
We end our story with his answer:
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“It depends — if employees make up late (as in Bloom, Han and Liang 2023), then this does not reduce productivity. Indeed, national productivity during/after the pandemic has been high.
“If employees stay productive, that can really be a good thing. Golf courses are becoming more popular due to the distribution of play throughout the day and week, avoiding the peak load on weekends and before/after work. This will increase “golf productivity” – the number of golf courses played (and revenue generated) per course.
“This improved usage and productivity is likely true for other leisure activities such as shopping, gyms, sports and personal services.
“Thus, WFH can increase the productivity of a country by making better use of personal assets — golf courses, shops, gyms, hairdressers, etc. This size can also be large — according to our golf data, productivity has grown by about by 50%, and these “recreational activities” are a significant component of GDP.”
Editor’s Note: To see the PowerPoint presentation from Stanford University, please click here. And read another article on leisure and work from home from The New York Times, please click here.
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Nick Piastowski Golf.com Editor
Nick Piastowski is Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing golf stories. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit a golf ball farther and more accurately, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game of hitting the ball left, right, and short, and drinking cold beer to clear his score. You can contact him about any of these topics – his stories, his game or his beer – at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
