I missed this year’s show, along with the NGCOA Golf Business Conference. It’s the first PGA Show I’ve missed since 1999. Back then, my golf industry employer left me off the travel list. This time, I stayed away under an abundance of health and safety caution. The PGA and Reed Exhibitions had an admirable and appropriate mandatory mask rule, and they deserved credit for leading with trust and safety despite mixed results.

Following the close of the show came flowing the articles about the “best and worst” (more on that later) and whether the show can survive without the “big boys” participating in future shows, assuming we’re at or much closer to normal than we are now. Let’s see if we can learn anything from history. 

Does anyone remember when the Las Vegas PGA Merchandise show was a pretty big deal? It wasn’t quite to the scale of the Orlando show, but it was big enough to command space in the massive Las Vegas Convention Center. I was at the last big one, in September 2000. It was as much party as business but significant nonetheless. The following year, 9/11 hit just a week or two before the scheduled show opening. It was canceled and never regained its glory, downsizing progressively and held in much smaller venues, first the Sands Convention Center, then to hotel exhibit areas attracting primarily apparel vendors. The PGA and Reed adapted in meaningful ways for vendors and attendees. 

Back in Orlando, the big show has suffered three body blows that also impacted the economy – 9/11, the Great Recession, and now Covid. It survived previous knockdowns, getting off the mat with maybe the biggest show I remember, in 2011 as the economy recovered. The show floor was full one end to the other, highlighted by TaylorMade at the far end of the apparel section with a colossal display introducing their R-11 white drivers. It seemed like a big deal, and it was as TaylorMade’s share of metal drivers swelled from 30% to 52% by May of 2012. But, for TaylorMade, it was “PGA Show me the money.” 

However, if the PGA Show needs to get better by welcoming back the “big boys” missing this year, I have the answer: Open a last day to the public. Oh, my goodness, imagine the rush of wide-eyed local Florida golfers flooding the show floor pursuing everything and anything that might make them one stroke better, or five yards longer, and not have to dodge alligators. Of course, the PGA and Reed could charge admission and likely get a premium price by capping attendance. Twenty bucks? Fifty? One hundred? How much would the public pay to see the latest and greatest everything the sport has to offer all in one place? 

Ooh, how about chartering buses to bring golfers from the Villages? What a day trip that would be for the gray-haired golf set. Cha-ching, baby. 

Logistics? Sure. Many exhibitors would want to stay out of the way, having little relevance to the golf consumer. Years ago, the show created product sections, grouping companies by product or service type. Refine the show floor set up so companies that want to stay can designate so, leaving the rest to pack up and get out of the way like they do now, and have the public’s day on Saturday. 

Want to know who would benefit most? How about the many one-and-done companies who arrive at the show with the latest and greatest swing trainer, putter, or magical wedge that can even get you out of a gopher hole without taking a stroke penalty? They’re the “10-footers,” referencing their booth size. And while often scoffed at by the professionals, the public eats up this stuff. It’s a live version of an infomercial. 

Okay, so here is the worst new item I’ve ever seen. Through the years, I’d take some time to roam the aisles, searching for the most bizarre new invention. Finally, I found one that’s never been topped. Boldly introduced in a 30-foot, professionally designed booth was a device for golf tips. It was about the size of a pager (Google it if you are too young to remember), and using a CD (again, Google it) and your desktop computer, you could load up to 18 tips. “Keep your head down,” “Left arm straight,” “Follow through,” and then maybe, “Why the f*** did I buy this.” The device had two elastic straps that you used to attach it to…the top of your golf shoe. Wait, wait, I’m not done yet. To scroll through the tips, you’d tap your foot to find the tip most relevant to the shot you were preparing to hit, turning every user into Fred Astaire on the tee box. I don’t recall the retail price, only that the inventor told me he spent $250,000 on development and attendance at the show. And, I never saw him again. 

But if the public could have found him, he might have left a happy man. 

I do not doubt that the PGA Show will survive. The sport and industry of golf and its supporters are resilient. And if the “Covid bump” has created new and returning golfers who stay and enjoy the sport, then the regulars will continue to fill booth space, the big boys will return, and the next-best-thing inventors will shell out the bucks to strut their stuff. I can’t wait to see them all next year.