BRIAN WHITCOMB: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the 55th PGA Merchandise Show and this morning at the PGA Equipment Forum we're going to listen to a wonderful, distinguished panel to talk about the economy here with regards to golf in the United States. We're excited about that and it's a great kickoff. We just hope from the PGA of America's perspective that you have a very enlightening hour now, but also a wonderful week, as this is the kickoff to the 2008 golf season here in America.

I want to be sure to take just a moment and thank our sponsors for this forum, Callaway Golf, Srixon and of course, PING. Without their help, this doesn't happen. So thank you very much for providing this opportunity.

We are excited and glad to be here and we hope you have a successful golf season and we hope that in some ways this U.S. Economy Forum helps you in your efforts and. I wish you all the best and I hope you enjoy the show.

JENNIFER MILLS: Thank you. So often we are educated by our children, and if you know what I mean, they say things and you realize how insightful it is. This morning my 10 year old and I were studying her vocabulary words. One of the words was "potential energy." And she's ten.

I said, "Emily, what is potential energy?"

She said, "Energy that is stored." And then she added, "But Mom, I don't have any of that. I use all of mine." I thought, you sure do.

Well, my thought on that and the insight there is that's what this is; this three days is just a vast grouping of potential energy, energy that's stored in terms of communication, insight, education, talent, skills, all the things that we will use to help grow this wonderful game of golf. So for that, I thank all of you for being here and again we are ready for a terrific week.

Let me introduce a panel to you. We have some power hitters here this morning who are ready to talk about a lot of different topics. Let's begin with Tim Finchem, the PGA TOUR Commissioner is here this morning, as well as David Fay, the Executive Director of the USGA; Joe Steranka, CEO of the PGA of America. And Steve Mona is here. He is the CEO of the Golf Course Superintendents of America.

Gentlemen, if you will come up and take the stage.

COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: Just a few comments as we get started. I want to thank the PGA of America for their hospitality and creating again this year another great show.

In addition to the gentlemen that have been introduced, the other members of the re designed board of the World Golf Foundation include George O'Grady, who is not here this week; Peter Dawson, the CEO of the Royal and Ancient who is here; and I'm not so sure she's right here but he's in the building, Carolyn Bivens, who is here with her board this morning; and as well, Jim Armstrong. Who is the general manager of Augusta National Golf Club.

As many of you know by now, the World Golf Foundation began in 1994, and it historically has organized a World Golf Hall of Fame, the 20/20 initiative and the First Tee Program. It has been reorganized to reflect a coming together of golf organizations to really create a platform to deal with some of the issues that affect us as we go forward, and Steve Mona has come on just a few weeks ago and will start on March 3 of this year as the new CEO of the World Golf Foundation.

The World Golf Foundation will be adding to its repertoire of activity of coordinating a supportive role for the anti doping efforts of the professional golf associations, as well as a revitalized research and communication effort to go along with its historical mission and we look forward to being part of the World Golf Foundation going forward.

The other thing that's happened is that because of the nature of the executive committee, the board determined that the chairmanship of the World Golf Foundation would begin to rotate. And this year the chairman will be David Fay, the current Executive Director of the United States Golf Association.

And we can get on now about the business of what we're here to do today which is to focus on the United States at this point and the economic impact that golf is having in this country, and with that I'd like to introduce a man you all know, a good friend of golf and the new chairman of the World Golf Foundation, David B. Fay.

DAVID FAY: Thank you very much, Tim. Good morning everyone. I appreciate the fact that you all took time out of your busy schedule to be with us this morning. I will go right now to the slides. In 2002, Golf 20/20 hired the highly respected economic research company SRI International to quantify the scope of the U.S. golf economy. That initially report based on 2000 information was announced at the Golf 20/20 Conference in November and it showed that golf was a $62 billion industry, and obviously the information was useful in a variety of forms to establish golf as a vital contributor to the U.S. economy and we agreed to do this once every five years.

Five years later we again went to SRI to do the same study using 2005 data. The results, golf had grown from a $2 billion industry to a $76 million industry. And I think that those last two bullet points on this graph here are pretty impressive; that golf is bigger than the motion picture and video industries combined. And look at the last one as it relates to facilitate revenues from all other professional and semi pro spectator sports.

These statistics, which are by the way in your executive summary, but focus on these for a while. You can see impressive growth from 2000 to 2005 with the exception of something that we all are aware of, golf course capital investment. Now in 2005, SRI had a new wrinkle. What it took was using standard multipliers approved by the federal government the $76 million golf economy generated a total economic impact on the U.S. economy of $195 billion. And within that number, the golf industry is responsible for approximately two million jobs and the industry generates total wage income of $61 billion.

Now, the breakdown in the dates including comparisons to the other recreational and activities can be found in the press release in the executive summary which you have all been provided including the conclusions on bullet form on page ten. If you have any specific questions about the methodology of this report, they can be answered by Dr. Peter Ryan of SRI who is with us today.

Now, numbers can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. My takeaway is this: Golf is a meaningful contributor to this nation's economic engine, and it's important that everyone in this building, important that everybody in the industry is aware that have and it's important that everyone who plays golf is aware of these statistics.

But I would say it's equally important, if not more so, that this information about the economic impact golf has been circulated to those 270 million Americans who don't play golf, because we all know that they are people who will definitely be in a position to affect and influence golf's future's well being.

And with that, I would like to turn it over to a man, a good friend of mine, Joe Steranka, who is in my mind, the first to use these economic numbers as a basis for promoting the game of golf. He now, of course, is the CEO of the PGA of America, which is so important to the health and the growth of the game of golf.

I will ask Joe to provide us with his perspectives on the economic impact study and how it relates to work that we're doing in the States.

JOE STERANKA: Good morning, and I'd like to add my welcome to the PGA Merchandise Show. There are 8,000 PGA professionals registered for the show, up seven percent over last year, and you can see they are certainly adding to the commerce of golf that we are talking about today.

David did a good job of setting the table when we talk about the national economic impact and to put our industry in perspective with many of the other industries and in a positive light should make us all look at ourselves and our contributions and that of our industry with an even higher degree of respect and pride.

Our goal was to take information at the national level and make it meaningful; how do we actually push this data to work. That statement, all politics is local and we are certainly seeing that now as we begin to identify candidates for our presidency. And at the state level is where state golf associations, PGA sections, chapters of the club managers association, the golf course superintendents, the golf course owners, all of the groups that contribute to funding this economic impact data at the national and local level are working to elevate the game and the stature of the business at the state level.

To do something that has the degree of credibility and respect, you need a consistent template, and that was where Dr. Peter Ryan came in and Golf 20/20 working with Peter has developed a template that can be replicated in all 50 states. And we've certainly focused short term on some other states.

We began this work in the State of Virginia, and looking at Virginia, close to Washington, D.C., a pretty diverse state when it comes to the types of facilities in the State of Virginia, a resort community, a private club community and a daily fee community.

David talked about the direct and induced and indirect economic impact and these numbers are in front of you here showing that a total of $3.1 billion flows through Virginia's economy because of the golf industry; 40,000 jobs, some of those $2 million nationally, 40,000 in Virginia with earnings and wages of almost a billion dollars, about 1/60th of that 61 billion that was cited.

We are looking at the study of the impact of the game on our environment and the use of natural resources. It showed in Virginia, we took water usage as the specific point that we wanted to focus on there. In the State of Virginia, golf courses represent 2.2 percent of the turfgrass in the state.

So it wasn't these vast acres of heavily irrigated, heavily fertilized tracks of land that people thought. Relatively small part of Virginia's turfgrass, residential homes were more than 50 percent of the turfgrass in the state, but it showed that second line there, .4 percent of the water used to irrigate all of the turfgrass in the state was used by golf, and it showed we are an efficient user of natural resources.

When you layer on the fact that golf produced for than 18,000 per acre, far and away nine times that of the grape or wine industry in the state and certainly a lot more than residential homes. It showed that golf is a sizable contributor to Virginia's economy; it's a job provider; it's a tax generator and supporter of tourism and a very efficient user of natural resources.

As Steve will talk about, we also do some pretty good things for a lot of causes and have a great human impact, as well.

Looking ahead at what other states we would use this type of study, we've completed reports in Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio. Iowa had a tax assessment issue that they were wrestling with that the bodies in that state, so this is going to help them.

Louisiana, certainly that region of the country looking to recover, so anything we could do as an industry to focus on golf as a catalyst for that region of the country, a way that those states can come back into some level of what they were before Katrina is important.

Michigan, going through a difficult time but the golf industry in Michigan has been very stable. Minnesota and Ohio are two other states, and California is certainly going to be important when we look at the environmental front and our use of water. Massachusetts has a very strong group of allied associations with the local organizations that I mentioned here, and then Texas, as well.

I mentioned the Iowa legislation that they were looking at and Arizona has a ban on ryegrass because of the water needed during overseeding for that ryegrass, so it helped in that particular area.

South Carolina, there was a study done that showed that golf returned $17 for every dollar invested to show golf tourism so it showed a very high return on investment for the government when they invest in our sport. Again we do need to better manage and define the environmental perceptions of our game.

We can only contribute so much time as a group of volunteers to lead the industry. There is not a there has not been a formal industry group that represents all of the different components, whether it's David or Tim or myself, Carolyn Bivens.

In the past we spoke individually about our respective contributions, and I hope you're beginning to see that there's a great power and benefit for the industry when we speak as one voice. But you need a good leader to drive that for us, and I'm really pleased to introduce now a friend of mine and someone who is that leader. He comes from a great perspective on the environment as head of the Golf Course Superintendents Association. But as much as you've contributed to the game through the GCSAA, I know you'll do even more with the World Golf Foundation.

STEVE MONA: Thank you, Joe. Good morning, all. I'm actually going to wear two hats this morning. I'm going to put my GSCAA cap on first and then my World Golf Foundation cap on second paragraph par with respect to my GCSAA cap, I want to talk about golf's impact on the environment.

Joe made some reference to it a few minutes ago but I wanted to talk about really some ground breaking work that's occurring right now as we speak that's being sponsored by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America and the environmental institute for golf.

What's occurring right now is a multi year project to collect data about what actually occurring on golf courses in five specific areas. This for the first time will give us a clear picture of what's really happening on the golf course from an environmental perspective. This is data we've never had before which we think is going to be very powerful. The first report which quantifies the physical characteristics of the golf course has been published, and now it's available and anybody in this room can have access to it.

Some specifics from that report just to give you some sense for what kind of information we are now obtaining. First of all, what we now know and we are talking about 16,000 golf courses in the United States is that the average golf course consists of about 150 acres, 150. But here is what's interesting. Only a hundred acres of the 150 is maintained turfgrass. The rest are buildings, golf paths, waterways, lakes, whatever you want to make reference to, so two thirds are maintained turf and only three acres of that hundred are maintained at tee height, and another three acres at green height; which, let's face it, those are the most intensely used acreage on the golf course. We think that's a great story and golf tends to get painted as this big user of inputs, and what we can now show is that really in terms of what's intensely maintained it's really a small amount of acres on a golf course.

There are four more surveys that will come out over the next two years. First there will be a survey on water use, how much water is really going on on the golf course and what's the quality of the water that's going on the golf course. That will be coming out later this year in 2008.

In 2009, have very important surveys will come out, one on nutrients; and very importantly, the fourth survey will be about pesticide, what kind of pesticide use occurs on a golf course. Those will be critical for us to know and finally in 2010, we will be releasing the survey date on environmental practice, what's the golf course superintendent doing to enhance the environment on etch golf course.

This will be powerful data and will give us a baseline in which we will continue to monitor how well we are doing as an industry and this will go into the forum best practices management that can be shared across the different practitioners, whether they be golf course architects, whether they be designers, whether they be superintendents and will give us good data when we have presentations, whether it's to local zoning committees or legislative bodies or regulatory bodies. Very important data for us to have. This information will also be used for some of the state surveys that Joe made reference to a little while ago, and that the impact of that will also be used in our next economical study that will be released in five years.

We will take what we discuss today and a lot more to Washington, D.C. on April 16 where we will conduct National Golf Day for the first time and we will be sharing this information in those venues as appropriate as well.

This research tells us very clearly that properly managed and that's always the caveat, properly managed golf courses can are compatible with that environment, we can make that statement.

Secondly as importantly, this will help us make informed decisions to help us continue to protect golf and its relationship with the environment and that, too is very important.

Let me switch caps now and I'm going to put on my World Golf Foundation cap and I want to talk to you about something that is arguably as important the first two components, environmental and economic impact, and now I want to talk to you about human impact.

We have a great story to tell here. We have a three legged stool essentially environmental economic and human impact that make up the three components to that. What this study showed us is that golf generates $3.5 billion for charities in the United States in the year 2005. That's $3.5 billion. Now, to give that some context about 130 million comes from the various tours, whether it's LPGA Tour, PGA TOUR and the other professional organizations, but that still leaves $3.37 billion that's generated by those 16,000 golf courses throughout the United States. All those Monday Pro Ams and Monday fund raisers do a tremendous job of generating dollars that go back into this country in very worthy ways.

And we can say as an industry, and I'm proud to say this, and this is important to know that golf generates more money for charity than any other sport that exists on this planet as far as we know, and that's a strong statement. And maybe more importantly, it also helps those charitable organizations generate revenues that contribute to their mission and ultimately impact on the lives of Americans throughout our great nation.

With that I'm going to turn it back over to Jennifer and look forward to seeing all of you as the week goes on. Thank you very much.

JENNIFER MILLS: We'd like to open it up for questions from the floor. You've had a chance to listen to what our panel has to say and if you can keep your questions geared towards the economic impact of the game of golf on our country that would be appreciated. So we have a couple microphones in the audience.

Q. Could you give us an idea of when you think the survey and study will be completed for all 50 states, and what point will you be able to take all of this information and use it most effectively?

JOE STERANKA: Right now the team that is working at SRI can take on about six states every three to four months. So it's more important to make sure that we have the collaborative effort at the state level among the PGA section, the club managers, chapters and superintendents chapter and the owners. Those are the four entities that have employees working in the state or have investments in that state. More recently we've seen a value of also adding the state Golf Association, because they tie in to being able to communicate to the people that play the game in the States, some key messages about golf's impact.

So right now we're hitting the priority states and where we have that type of collaboration already. For example, you write for the Palm Beach Post, and we're working to create that type of structure in the State of Florida where we have two PGA sections. It's a big state, and so there's a lot of different chapters and sections to pull together.

Q. I think everybody in the golf industry wants to congratulate you in particular for coming out for the drug testing that you'll commence in July, it just will put to rest all kind of potential rumors that might go around. But I'm certainly not a doctor, but it seems like one of the things that you're testing is the beta blocker, maybe I don't even have the right name to it but I know some people use that for something called familial tremor, which just happens to be in my family and it helps the shaking, and I just wondered if some of the things that seem to be on the list are sort of normal medical kind of things that maybe don't have to really be prohibited and I just wonder if all of those things were taken into account.

Q. I know there will be a lot of talk about it elsewhere during the show, but can you talk a little bit about golf and participation rates and the increase, what's happening in the industry overall to try to move those rates upward?

JOE STERANKA: I'll jump in. We have a report through the month of November. So as of December, our PGA Performance Trak system, it's a new data collection program that we do with the National Golf Course Owners Association. It tracks rounds played and revenue per round and breaks out revenue per round into golf revenue, food and beverage revenue and merchandise revenue. It showed that rounds played were up maybe a half of a percent to one percent this year, even though days opened, the number of days opened for business weather being one of the factors on that was down two percent this year. So some marginal growth in rounds played.

More importantly though, there was ten percent gains at a revenue per round, every month this year. So it looks like golf course operators finally began this is a second year in a row that there was real revenue growth per round. We have stabilized prices. Prices are starting to climb back up. Now, if you delve into revenue per round, and it's primarily golf revenue per round that increased. Merchandise revenue was relatively flat, maybe down slightly in some areas and then food and beverage revenue was up marginally.

But I'd urge you to look at the PGA performance release, and that also has some data that shows impact on the programs, such as Play Golf America, and the impact on revenue per round.

STEVE MONA: That reminded me of one element of the World Golf Foundation that I just wanted to mention. And Tim alluded to it in his comments with respect to communications research and public affairs, that will be a function I don't know how it will look once we settle everything out.

But what we are going to attempt to do within the industry, and a lot of the organizations and institutions are involved with activities in all three of those areas. One of our roles will be as much as possible try to coordinate what's going on in those three areas to eliminate as much as we can both overlap and in some cases out right duplication.

So I think we will be able to speak with one voice for a long time going forward.

Q. I'm here representing two agendas, one is the National Football League alumni Players Association, through the NFL alumni we contribute to charities approximately $115 million a year. This has done on an annual basis through our local chapters, various teams that have alumni sponsor golf tournaments. Right now there's about 36 of those around the country and that leads to the Super Bowl of golf which is played annually in Hawaii. Another question, I'm also here representing a couple of private country clubs and there's an issue now about advertising for our membership in private country clubs and how to achieve a format in order that we can go out and develop a profile for advertising that is ethical and legal and that not lose and I direct this to David Fay; perhaps he might know something about it, about how to lose tax exempt status and you can lose it by advertising. So maybe somebody has a quasi legal opinion about that.

DAVID FAY: I confess I have a hearing problem, so I didn't capture the second aspect of those comments which I think were the ones that I need to address.

JENNIFER MILLS: The idea that a private club in advertising chances losing its 501(c)(3) status or its status by the money spent advertising and how to prevent that.

DAVID FAY: I don't have a snap answer on that. That could be so subjective. Although I know there are many parts of the country where some very, very good private clubs are going out and looking for new methods.

The fact is, we are coming near the end of the baby boom and we need to get new members and new people involved in golf, and often times in private golf courses. I'm sorry; I'm not an advertising guru.

COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: If I understand the question, it's is it true that you can lose your tax status because of advertising. And I assume the second part of your question would be, is there something we can do about that.

I don't know of any initiatives or other way to deal with changing the tax laws at the state or federal level that relate to that issue, but it's maybe something we should look at. We can check. It's something we can look at.

Q. Tim said that Steve would start in March; where will his office be located?

JENNIFER MILLS: Steve, can we come see you at your office with all our questions?

STEVE MONA: Hopefully it will be under construction soon, it will be at the World Golf Village, a door or two down from The First Tee.

Q. The numbers you used, the financial numbers that are used, is any part of that I know at my facility, we do a lot of weddings and banquets; are the numbers just derived from golf rounds, merchandise, the golf end of it or are the figures used also from the hospitality end of it?

JENNIFER MILLS: I'll mention Peter Ryan is here.

PETER RYAN: It's new economic activities in a golf facility, so it's all economic activity at a golf facility, that would include F&B and all our other total economic value.

To answer another question that was asked about rounds, when we estimate economic activity, there's not necessarily a direct correlation to increasing rounds or decreasing rounds. We are just looking at revenues that are coming into the system, new economic activity, so it is possible and, in fact, the case that rounds have been flat as many of you know or may have been flat, but the total value of the economic activity could increase over time. So that's what we are looking at when we look at golf economy as economic activity.

JENNIFER MILLS: Peter is here representing the Stanford Research Studies which did the follow up.

Q. The Performance Trak that we try to do every month, the total facility number, is that supposed to include weddings and banquets?

JOE STERANKA: Yes.

Q. Then I need to go in and make some corrections.

JENNIFER MILLS: Other questions?

Q. We've talked a lot about the numbers that are being generated and the reports that you are awaiting; what are you planning to do with that? Obviously you'll lobby governments; curious what the advantages of that information and what you hope to gain.

STEVE MONA: First, the environmental data which I made reference to earlier, what happened there is we will create a baseline with the five studies. And I made specific reference to the first one and from then I'll come right back and do those surveys again and monitor the progress over a period of time so that's one thing.

Another thing is and this is probably the broadest possible sense as it relates to economic impact and we wanted to be able to quantify how big of an industry we have; we didn't know that. We did five years ago, but now we know much more intimately than we did before, and we think it's important for us in the game of golf to know what we are going to be a part of in the industry.

With respect to the human impact that we talked about with regard to the money that's raised from golf, we felt that was very important to know as well, and it tells other stories with respect to how golf contributes to society generally. So those would be three ways that I would answer your question with regards to what we are going to do with this data?

JOE STERANKA: I would add to that by saying that PGA of America looks at our 28,000 men and women professionals as ambassadors of the game and business. So we have never before had this type of economic data to speak nationally. And when the state economic data is added to that to really make golf course superintendents and managers and professionals all speaking from the same talking point, so to speak, about the influence of our game and the economic impact in our communities and counties at the state level and at the national level, all of that is going to raise the stature of golf, whether it's in a township or a state or nationally and that higher stature is going to benefit everyone in our game.

Q. I'm from New Hampshire and I'm just interested in David Fay, if you know, how many GHIN handicap holders there are, and if you do, I'm sure you do, how you formulate how you get the overall number of players out there based on a GHIN handicap, the percentages and are those numbers available per state?

DAVID FAY: First, it's important, GHIN is just one handicap computation. I think the question should be how many American golfers have a USGA handicap index, and that's around 5 million.

As to the specific questions, I think I would prefer to discuss that with you afterwards.

DICK JOHNS: I'm Dick Johns with the Mid Atlantic PGA. What the report first came out we sent an executive summary to every one of the state legislatures of Virginia along with a cover letter highlighting the points on the PowerPoint presentation and now we are in the process with the five organizations that have been mentioned about putting together two person teams of PGA professional and superintendents and a club manager and a member of the Virginia state Golf Association; and we are actually going to visit all of the state legislatures over this year with really no agenda and just going to highlight the economic impact of the study and make sure we are aware of it and make sure that they have seen it because we have already sent it to them of course.

But we think it's a great opportunity to establish a relationship with whom we don't have an agenda, so we are just going there and going to sit down and talk with them for ten minutes and leave them a piece of paper and when we do have an issue we have a relationship established. So that's the plan, anyway, and hope we can pull that off.

Q. The golf economy in facilities have grown from '02 to 2007, but the economy is flat and that's taken away much of our purchase power. So how do we say it increased six percent a year with little pricing power []?

JOE STERANKA: It's actually 2005, 2000 to 2005. Department of Commerce only comes out every five years, so it's even greater annual percentage growth, and it directly relates to that growth and pricing power.

We did see a period post 9/11 that the supply of golf out stripping the demand of golf and a lot of PGA professionals and others responded with discounting to try to make it up in volume, and that took about 18 months to two years to kind of settle out; but as of 2005, 2005 is when we saw the first growth in revenue per course.

The reason we track it so carefully at the PGA of America is the only time our member compensation goes up is when fill tie revenue goes up, and so PGA member comp had been kind of flat from 2000 to 2003, but there was some sizable gains, double digits gains depending on the career path for PGA members in 2005 because there was real growth over the previous few years.

Q. I was curious if there was anything being done or being approached about property tax as it relates to the golf courses. It seems like different states assess those property taxes in different ways and some of them do them as to what the value of the property is and some of them do them as to the amount of profits that the golf courses are taking in and I know that the agriculture has done a lot to get their property taxes reduced and it seems like the better we do, the more the government wants to take for the taxes.

JOE STERANKA: Well, we have some experience with that in the State of Florida. We've been up to Tallahassee. At least in Florida, it goes down to the county level and the county tax assessor. So there are some things that you can address at the state legislative level that often times on tax assessment goes down to counties.

And it's a little bit different state by state but certainly this data is going to help us explain the job impact, the tax revenue generation, just on retail sales. We do think it's unfair that a golf course with the playing space of that golf course and as Steve mentioned, 150 acres of total space would get assessed at the same rate as the real estate that surrounds it that actually is getting a bump in its value because of its adjacency to the golf course, so it is going to help us with that.

Q. What do you see as the impact of some of the sub prime to some of the courses with residential development, and is there any initiative to try to capture any foreign tourism given the dollar; an effective 30 percent discount.

COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: On the first one, I think that just I think we all recognize that the depression in the housing industry, certainly a recession at least in some states now, is not a good thing for new golf course development as related to the housing market. That's cyclical; that's the good news. The question is, how long it's going to take.

On the second one, I think you're really talking about daily fee, high end properties that have the wherewithal to invest in reaching out to foreign customers, international travelers in those markets, and that's being done all the time in increasing levels in the United States.

I know with Sawgrass, Pebble Beach, resorts like that, have seen a huge up take in the last two years of foreign visitors which has assisted in building rounds of golf, but I'm not so sure that's as much a national issue as it is selected question as it relates to individual properties that are in that business.

STEVE MONA: With respect to the sub prime question and the whole housing piece, we'll be doing this again in 2010. I think it's probably fair to say based upon where we are right now that that particular metric will probably be lower than what it was in 2005. We are not in the business here of making predictions but probably as we sit here that's probably a pretty fair statement.

JOE STERANKA: Just as we saw a drop, the only component of the core in the able industries to drop was capital investment. There was a natural slowdown, which I think everybody in the industry thought was good, to slow down the supply of golf so that that dropped.

You know, there were a lot of courses built. Most of the new courses that have been opening for the last few years have been real estate driven, so that has added to the supply. So maybe catching our breath a little bit on new course openings that were designed to sell something other than golf isn't such a bad thing, but it definitely will have an impact.

PETER RYAN: I just want to add to that answer. In 2005, as many of you know, the housing industry was the at the peak in the history of in the U.S. as numbers being constructed and that positively affected golf. If we looked at it today it would be a lot less. And it's stopped in some states. In terms of price, late 2005, early 2006 had the peak in price.

So part of what we are reflecting in the growth of economy is the economy growth in golf. Housing in 2005 would be the best year for that, and every year there will be ups and downs, so over a five year period that should moderate a little bit.

Q. The 30 million people that are out there in the country who play golf, we kind of represent that choir, those of us here. The other 90 percent of people out there are going to decide ultimately things like how much water golf courses get, how much you pay in taxes and that sort of thing. Given all these wonderful numbers up here, is there a plan in place to get that other 90 percent, that message about the good thing golf does?

STEVE MONA: The short answer to that is, yes, there is. This is the start of it obviously. This is a pretty good venue to start that process. As I mentioned April 16, National Golf Day in Washington and that's going to be a great day to communicate this message. All of the institutes that participate in the World Golf Foundation, we will be asking them to participate through all their vehicles. So this is a process and it's long term in nature, but we do intend to use this information to the fullest extent possible because we think we have a great story to tell.

I've been in the golf industry for a long time as have many people in this room and it seemed to me that for a lot of years, we almost wanted to operate in secrecy or we were almost ashamed of that what we did, and we shouldn't be. We have a great vehicle and we're going to tell the story because we think we have a good one to tell.

COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: The 90 percent don't make the decision. The public sector makes the decisions of zoning and tax taxes and environmental regulation, and it's that focus to bring this information to the public sector in a general way to create a climate, as Steve alluded to earlier, the three legs of the stool: It's got a human impact, it's got an environmental impact, business impact, taxation impact. And the more the public understands that about the game and about this industry, the better off we are when we are dealing with individual issues that come up over longer term. So this is in my view the start of a long process to get there, and I think it's off to a very good start.

Q. I don't want to be part of the forum up there but I just wanted to answer a question about taxation and the country club or a golf club, I don't know where he's from, but it's a federal answer and there's a local answer. The federal answer is, if the club labels itself as private or semi private they can apply for tax exempt status understand 501(c) or whatever the paragraph is and that allows you to be a tax free organization.

And the question taxation to property rights would be based on the state and as stipulated before that goes down to the county. Now some counties when you are developing your golf course, you are probably buying agricultural land and that state, you can get a CO and get a variance on that and maintain it as an agricultural facility for a given period of time providing you are farming some animals on that property. The majority of states that I'm familiar with allow the zoning to go into recreation. If you allow it to go further than that because you're looking for something to do at a higher level, you're making a bigger mistake because that's when your taxation is going to be over and above what you want to pay. The regular taxation is much lower than business.

Q. I want to applaud you, looking at four of you and what you represent and your involvement in the golf industry. I think you are a powerful force and thank you very much on behalf of the golf industry. (Applause)

JENNIFER MILLS: I think that's a perfect spot to wrap it up. Thank you very much.