A few years ago, Golf Genius tried to build a coaching app, couldn't get it to work, and ended up buying the one I'd already built.
I'll tell you that whole story next edition, because it's the best proof I have for what I'm about to lay out. For now it's enough to know that the improvement layer of golf is valuable enough that the people consolidating this industry would rather buy their way in than build it themselves.
Which brings me to the thing almost everyone building in golf gets wrong. They spend all their energy chasing the biggest number on the board, when that number is the one that matters least.
You've seen it. Participation at an all-time high, more than 48 million and climbing toward 50, and every pitch deck in the category opens on that slide like it's a permission slip.
The trouble is that the headline number actively misleads, because the bucket it describes is leaking from the bottom faster than most people realize.
The NGF even has a name for it, the leak in the bucket. Golf pours millions of new players in the top every year and quietly loses millions out the bottom, and the churn is brutal in exactly the years you'd expect it to look healthiest.
In 2020, the year everyone remembers as golf's great boom, the game still lost 5.7 million players. Only about one in four people who ever try golf actually stick.
The three who leave were never going to spend a meaningful dollar with you on their way through, which is the whole problem with building for the crowd. So set the 50 million aside and look instead at the golfers who stay and spend, because the concentration there is staggering.
A committed minority, roughly 21% of golfers, buys about 75% of all the equipment sold in this country.
A fifth of the players carry three quarters of the spending, and that ratio has held steady for twenty-five years.
Now, playing a lot of golf is a decent way to find that buyer, but it's still a guess, because plenty of people log fifty rounds a year and never spend a cent actually trying to get better.
There's a far clearer sign sitting right next to it, and it's the one I'd build a business around: the golfer who takes a lesson.
A lesson is an investment in a passion. It's a golfer telling you, with their wallet, that they've decided their score is a problem worth paying to fix, and that single decision changes everything that follows.
The Proponent Group (top resource group for golf coaches) estimates
that lesson-takers spend 75 to 78% more at their facility than golfers who don't, and that every dollar spent on instruction pulls close to two more across the rest of the business.
They don't just buy the lesson. They buy the lesson, and then the clubs, the balls, the shoes, the rangefinder, and the next lesson after that.
That's why participation is the wrong unit to be measuring at all, and the clearest way to see it is to imagine two lists.
Picture a hundred thousand people who simply say they play golf. As prospects, they're worth pennies each, because most of them are already draining out the bottom of the bucket.
Now picture a hundred thousand confirmed lesson-takers instead. The headcount is identical, but you're looking at an entirely different animal, because every one of them has already raised a hand and paid to improve.
I'd value that second golfer 100x higher without blinking, since proven intent is the only thing that reliably tells you another purchase is coming.
The improver, the one who decided getting better was worth money and keeps right on deciding it, year after year is the key. They fund the entire sport, they buy across every category you could ever think to launch into, and they tell you exactly who they are the moment they book a lesson. That is your customer, not the vague tens of millions who mostly don't spend and partly vanish every year.
Game improvement is sexy and it's lucrative, and it's the whole reason scale.golf exists.
Next edition, the Golf Genius story, why I built for the instruction economy, a deeper dive into the data, and how teams I’m coaching are scaling.
[golfhackz] Insider
(If you’re new here, this is our D2C performance brand that we’re building semi-publicly)
Behind the scenes we’re planning out our tech stack to deliver a high value 1-many experience that we aim to launch in the fall.
Our most recent milestone though was the launch of our first newsletter and podcast episode. You can find both right HERE
Having done a lot of podcasting over the years, I’ve identified a few traps that we plan to avoid with this one.
An honest publication cadence - twice per month is all we can handle at the moment. The side benefit, though, is that each episode will have time to be clipped and shared. In the end, the data will tell us if we should do more or not.
We don't need to have it all figured out before we start - we have some guesses about what the best format(s) will be, but in the meantime, our goal is to publish and learn.
Any venture or project I do now is focused on lifestyle first, then the business outcome - In other words, we run the business, not have it run us.
FAQ
“Do enterprise logos actually help you sell, or just help you feel legitimate?”
I’ve sold sports tech software for fifteen years, to people you’d never have heard of all the way up to household names you’d know instantly. Here’s what I’ve learned: fancy logos might help you in the early days on a pitch deck, but they don’t move the needle on revenue the way you’d think.
The reason is that the people with the deepest pockets usually want the biggest discounts. You might be willing to give one. But the moment you ask, “Can we tell people you’re using this?” or “Will you tell other people you’re using this?” the answer, more often than not, is no. Or, “Sure, if you pay us.” So whatever money you made on the sale, they’re now asking you to pay back, and then some, for a little sponsorship.
One other thing worth noting. As you’re starting out, some of these bigger names come to you because they’re the early adopters in their category. That’s fantastic. That’s exactly who you want. But it doesn’t mean you’ll keep clipping logos off left and right, because eventually you run out of early adopters.
If you want to scale, go after the names you don’t know, or the second and third tier, the ones with upside, the ones looking to ascend. Not the ones at the top who have more to risk than to gain. Because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that most people inside these organizations aren’t looking to win. They’re just looking not to get fired.
Keep fighting the good fight. See ya next week 👊
-Spencer
P.S. My team and I put together a super sweet Notion Guide. If you’re enjoying this newsletter I’d love for you to share with a peer. If you do, I’ll send you over the guide!
