Couple the U.S. Open-Father’s Day alignment with the game’s surging popularity and it’s shaping up to be a strong midyear showing for many notable companies in the game.
The marriage of U.S. Open week and the Father’s Day weekend is always an important one for golf retailers, not to mention equipment, apparel and other golfer-focused companies. Couple this crucial time of the year with the game’s surging popularity (particularly last year’s record for total rounds-played at U.S. courses) and it’s shaping up to be a strong midyear showing for many notable names in the game. PGA Tour Superstore, golf’s biggest retailer with 53 locations, said this week will be the biggest, in terms of sales volume, in the company’s history. Overall market share for PGA Tour Superstore is up more than 60% and sales volume is up more than 90% compared to the most recent pre-pandemic year (2019). And while all categories are trending ahead of last year, the apparel business has been particularly strong – fueled in part by the popularity of trends like prints and bright colors, shorter shorts, and the arrival of new novelty brands. This year, PGA Tour Superstore has opened three more stores with an additional five still to come. Among them is a July opening in Rockville, Maryland, just down the road from the site of the upcoming KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Congressional Country Club. It’s little surprise TaylorMade CEO and President David Abeles calls golf’s peak season a “critical time of the year” for one of the game’s leading equipment manufacturers.
