Golfsmith Palm Beach Gardens Closed

Pete Carlson has been in the golf business in the Coachella Valley for 36 years, and he still has some faith there is enough golf business to keep a store open.

"I still think there are enough enthusiastic golfers in the area, and tennis players, too, because we are also in the tennis business," said Carlson, owner of Pete Carlson's Golf and Tennis in Palm Desert. "You just have to work at it, grind it."

In light of the news in the desert the past several months, some people might wonder if Carlson is right. While he is still seeing business at his store on Highway 111, other stores are closing. In April, Lumpy's shut down its two off-course stores in the area. Now comes word that Golfsmith Xtreme in Palm Desert will shutter, likely by the end of October, a victim of the national company's bankruptcy filing.

THE NEWS: Golfsmith store in Palm Desert to close

It's easy to view these closings and other recent news like Nike bailing out of the golf clubs business as more nails in an already tight coffin for golf. Even as participation and rounds played numbers start to come off their lows of the past dozen years or so, local golf stores are shutting down, two golf courses have closed in the past 18 months and other courses seem headed to closure.

It seems like a lot of doomsday talk, but perhaps there are some ways to see some light at the end of a long, long tunnel.

Take, for instance, Carlson's acknowledgement that the weakness in the Canadian dollar has been a problem for golf businesses in the desert. A weak Canadian currency certainly curtails spending from snowbirds that make the desert's season hum, even cutting their time in the desert. That Canadian dollar won't always be weak, so there could be a change in the business climate there.

And consider that perhaps the desert truly had too many golf shops. Carlson's store has been around since 1980, but Golfsmith opened in January 2009, with the PGA Tour Superstore and Dick Sporting Goods opening the same week in 2013. Add those to all the other places where you can by golf equipment or balls, from on-site pro shops to department and grocery stores, and it might have been too much golf equipment and shirts and balls and tees available for too few people.

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This isn't to say folks in the golf world shouldn't be very concerned about what Golfsmith and Nike and Lumpy's say about golf these days. The game was in a kind of free-fall for the past decade or so, and it is fighting hard to find a new footing and to start turning the game around. Growing the game is a lot easier to say than to do. Selling private club memberships and even public rounds of golf only happens when there are golfers, and the game needs more golfers. But the game still struggles with being expensive, being difficult and taking a long time to play.

Perhaps it is too easy to explain away one store closure here or a golf course closure there and not want to look at the entire picture. But in the desert, the economy of two countries has been at work, and expansion of off-course golf retailers were too much too soon for everyone to survive.

But Pete Carlson is surviving, and other stores will survive, too. They will just do it with less competition than they have faced in the past 10 years.

Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer. He can be reached at (760) 778-4633 or larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @Larry_Bohannan.

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Source: https://www.desertsun.com/story/sports/golf/2016/09/15/can-golfsmiths-store-closure-blamed-golfs-decline/90417560/