Another round?

Australian golfers are taking to the fairways more often according to figures released by the Australian Golf Industry Council last week.

The Australian Golf Industry Council, of which the PGA of Australia is a key member, has released a tally of club member competition rounds played across Australia last year.

A summary report provides industry guidance on full year 2009 rounds trends versus those recorded in the previous year as tracked by GolfLink.

Based on data submitted, this club competition rounds tally accounts for about 50 per cent of all rounds of golf played, but records “single handicapped rounds only, not including rounds played from events such as fourball and ambrose” according to the summary reports.

The database used for the analysis is from about 1600 facilities.

GolfLink recorded about 11.265 million competition rounds played in 2009 an increase of 6.9 per cent on 2008, generating an additional $4.56 million in golf club revenues.

Much of the increased rounds came from male golfers -- up by 7.7 per cent and they contributed 81 per cent of total rounds played. Female rounds were up by 5.5 per cent. NSW topped the state’s tally with about 4.3 million rounds ahead of Victoria (about 3 million). Queensland, hit by floods, had about 1.9 million ahead of Western Australia (about 872,000) South Australia (787,000) Tasmania (273,000) and Tasmania (about 49,000). NSW and Western Australia 9 per cent up on 2008, had the biggest increases.

It looks like Tiger's trip down under also had a great impact on the number of rounds played...Read the full report below for details.