July 2021 National Rounds Played Report
Rounds played continued to see encouraging momentum during July even though year-over-year play was actually down compared to last year’s pandemic-fueled summer surge.
July is typically the highest-volume month when it comes to play nationwide, just ahead of June and August — golf’s other peak season months. July 2021 play was -3.9% off the furious pace from a year ago, according to the latest rounds report produced by Golf Datatech, which incorporates facility data gathered by NGF. So, while technically down from 2020 (which saw a nearly 20% leap over 2019), nationwide play this July was up over the same period in other recent years.
Entering August, play was up 16% nationally compared to the same seven-month period in 2020, when approximately 20 million spring rounds were lost due to virus-related operational restrictions and anxiety.
Rounds were behind last year’s pace in all eight geographic regions for July, most notably in the Northeast, where temperatures were down an average of about five degrees (in the New England and Mid Atlantic regions) and precipitation was up considerably year-over-year.
