U.S Cumulative Rounds Played are UP!

Good news for the golf industry – At the start of August, play for the first seven months of 2023 was about 5% ahead of the same time a year ago. It’s a notable trajectory, as 2022 finished as one of the top four years for play on record.

But how do this year’s rounds, on a national level, stack up against 2021 — a year that saw more rounds of golf played at U.S. courses than any other in history?

July marked the fourth straight in-season month of YOY play gains. As the graphic indicates, this puts 2023 about 1% ahead of the pace from 2021 at the same point in the year, and approximately 16% ahead of the three-year pre-pandemic average.

Despite a slightly slower start to this year, the past several peak-season months have trended ahead of both 2021 and 2022, despite a very wet summer in the Northeast. And July is the highest-volume month for play annually, with rounds slightly declining over the remaining five months due to weather, seasonality and the return of the school year.