The annual industry event is bigger than ever
ORLANDO, Fla – Even though the annual PGA Show officially started Tuesday with the massive demo day at Orange County National, today was when it launched inside the Orange County Convention center.
It’s always interesting to be on-site when the doors open – and thousands of golf industry types file into the main floor. Think of it like a slow-motion Running of the Bulls in Pamplona with less mayhem and nobody gets gored.
It’s also not quite as frenetic as when the University of Alabama held its football fan day that featured a stampede of people running to beat having to stand in line.
This year’s PGA Show seems bigger than in past years. I’m not sure if it’s because there is an expanded pickleball section or what,
My approach to the show is simple – get there early the first day, set up in the media center, and then wander the floor to get athe lay of the land. There is a massive apparel section on one end with the more golf-centric portion on the other end. There’s no section that doesn’t attract a crowd.
I pretty much have started skipping demo day. This year it was about 45 degrees and blowing about 15-25 mph – not ideal to be wandering around the 360-degree range while waiting in line to hit the next best $600 driver. Instead, I chose to travel 77 miles south to Streamsong Resort to tour David McLay Kidd’s soon-to-open course. Kidd gave us a guided tour and I’ll have some video of it up on the alabamagolfnews.com Instagram site.
After the course tour – it looks amazing – I played 15 holes on Streamsong Black that features wildly undulating greens that were stimping at about 13. Challenging to say the least. Why only 15 holes? Our group took a wrong turn leaving the 12th green. Instead of going to the 13th tee, we accidentally went to the 16th.. We didn’t know it at the time and finally realized our mistake when we holed out.
There’s so much to see at the PGA Show that a lot of it gets lost in the shuffle, but the best thing I saw Wednesday was the launch of Genius, a new, first-of-its-kind golf ball featuring embedded electronics that capture crucial putting data. I’ll have more on this another day, but suffice it to say I confirmed what I already knew – my putting is mediocre at best.
Today’s brush with greatness – I saw Brad Faxon chatting with a couple of people.
More tomorrow.
Gregg Dewalt is the editor of Alabama Golf News
Have a story idea or a news item to report to Alabama Golf News? Email gregg@alabamagolfnews.com
Featured image by Dan Vukelich
