5Qs for PGA Tour Superstore’s Jill Thomas on golf’s new era
This is the year that golf went digital.
In March, PGA Tour golfers Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel, and Lucas Glover won the first Sofi Cup in the inaugural season of the Tomorrow Golf League (TGL) — and they did it without caddies and miles-long walks around a golf course.
The four compose the roster of the Atlanta Drive GC, one of seven teams of PGA standouts in the league that plays on virtual indoor courses, which was co-founded by Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank. The traditional sport of high-income executives who play at swank country clubs with lofty annual membership fees has now developed a more proletarian player base.
To find out more about the golf’s expanding reach, we recently spoke with Jill Thomas, chief marketing officer of PGA Tour Superstore (also founded by Blank) and the “Governor” of TGL’s first Sofi Cup-winning team.
Jill, we’ve noticed that PGA Tour Superstores has been expanding at a fairly rapid pace. Has the golf market become more energized?
What’s exciting about the sport of golf today is that its fan and player base has expanded. Through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, we’ve seen golf’s demographics become much younger and more diverse. There are more junior leagues and more women playing than ever before. Women now make up 28% of golfers on courses.
Virtual golf has also taken wing with top golfers like Justin Thomas and Rory Mcllroy competing in the newly formed TGL indoor league.
Yes, in fact, we are the official in-store retailer of TGL. The sport has become gamified. There are YouTube golfers. Younger players start playing online, love the game, and then show up on golf courses and play the game their own way. Our stores all have practice bays with simulators, so a lot of new golfers may not necessarily start playing with dad or mom or friends. They come into PGA Tour Superstores and practice on a simulator.
What’s the pace you’re setting on new store openings?
We are trying to open between six and eight new stores a year. We’re not really chasing a number. What we’ve been doing is looking at markets where we do a lot of e-commerce. But our stores are big. They average between 35,000 and 40,000 sq. ft. So, there are certain markets we’d love to be in right now but can’t enter them until we have the right space and location.
Is your expansion search nationwide?
It’s more focusing on the markets that really want us to be there. We’re in some small markets like Birmingham, Ala. We just opened in Grand Rapids, Mich. and soon in Norwalk, Conn. We have four locations in Houston. There’s a long list of markets we want to be in, but we react to availability in a certain market and don’t concern ourselves with being in affluent neighborhoods.
Golf traditionally being a sport favored by upscale consumers, that’s a surprise.
What we try to do is bring the brand and the sport closer to whatever community we enter. What many may not realize is, 75% of the golf courses in the U.S. are open to the public. Our stores have community relations funds to bind them closer to our communities. At PGA Tour Superstores, everybody’s welcome.
