The trade show season used to start in Munich at the end of September – and during Oktoberfest – but with the cancellation of Golf Europe for 2011, the trade has been given an added month’s grace until the Golf Show in Harrogate takes place from October 25-27. After its debut last year the Golf Show organisers – the PGA, Foremost and TGI – claimed the new event was already “Europe’s leading golf trade and educational event”.

Not only did the 2011 US PGA Championship change the life of its 25-year-old winner Keegan Bradley, it marked a change of fortunes for the PGA of America’s keystone event. Last year at Whistling Straits, the PGA Championship ended under a cloud as crowd favourite Dustin Johnson was penalised two shots at the critical final hole for grounding his club in what he should have known was a bunker, albeit one of Whistling Straits’ bunkers of unrelenting anarchy.

Darren Clarke’s career need no longer be defined by near misses and unfulfilled talent. What a fantastic performance that was by Clarke at the Open, and there can hardly have been a more popular winner, certainly within UK shores.

The sudden cancellation of Golf Europe 2011 by organisers Messe München has left a considerable void in the trade calendar. While the relevance of the show has lessened for many retailers, distributors and manufacturers in recent years, Golf Europe has still served as a central station at which industry professionals from the diversity of European golf markets could converge.

Forgive the irony, but the media can be so unnecessary sometimes. The fuss made over Rory McIlroy’s impromptu diversion of house hunting beside the 10th hole at Augusta has been ridiculous – the questioning of this 21-year-old golfer’s mental fortitude has been blown out of all proportion. So McIlroy might not have the same unwavering focus that Tiger Woods displayed at a similar age. Big deal. I could list 100 major winners who didn’t have it either. Nicklaus and Player had it, and so did Faldo. Seve too, but not many more.

As you will see in our lead News story on page 4, Titleist and Callaway are still at it over the four infamous patents, which Callaway claims Titleist infringed in manufacturing a previous generation of the Pro V1 family of balls. Titleist said they didn’t. Callaway said they did. Then Titleist argued they didn’t, again. It’s gripping stuff – like watching Padraig Harrington repeat the exact same putt 100 times on a practice green after a bad round – back and forth, back and forth.

The PGA Merchandise Show claims that over 42,000 industry professionals descended upon the Orange County Convention Centre last month – there was certainly a lot of energy about the show – but it is ironic that after all the elaborate product displays, marketing presentations and sales pitches, the biggest story in the golf trade right now missed the show altogether (no disrespect to the ProV1’s new dimples intended – they are the finest dimples I have ever seen).

Happy New Year to you all.

The New Year in the golf trade means it’s time to pack for Orlando. The 58th PGA Merchandise Show is not an event that will attract many PGA professionals from Europe, but the Orange County Convention Centre will certainly be the hub of the global golf industry for three days, January 27-29.

While the days tick down towards the Ryder Cup – the hours, minutes, seconds – so they do towards the end of the 2010 club season proper, which means it is time to start thinking about trade shows and stock for Spring 2011.

It has been a real roller-coaster ride for Nike, riding on the back of Tiger Woods for the past few months. Sticking with their man through thick and thin, it looked as though the world number one (still, just about) was repaying Nike’s loyalty by giving its Method 1 putter the ultimate endorsement, by switching to it in the week of the Open Championship. In with the Method’s polymetal grooves, and out with the trusty old Scotty Cameron Newport 2, with which Woods had claimed 13 major titles over the course of a decade. “It must feel like you are kicking out a member of the family,” an American journalist accidentally said to Woods in his pre-tournament press conference.

Golf seems to have come through a spell of resolution recently, with people shaking hands and moving forwards, onwards and upwards. This sense of co-operation is all quite refreshing – and just as our Arctic winter relents. Spring is definitely in the air.

Ping and the PGA Tour have come to an agreement relating to Ping’s infamous ‘pre-April-1990-Eye2-irons-and-wedges’, meaning there are no longer any loopholes to allow Phil Mickelson to get around the new groove rules – or anyone else for that matter (it’s not as if Mickelson was the only tour golfer to ignore his moral compass and resort to using the old Eye2 wedges this year, he was just the big name with the Callaway bag).

Live and alert, welcome to www.sgbgolf.co.uk, the new website for Europe’s leading golf trade title, SGB Golf.

As well as displaying all the editorial from SGB Golf magazine, our new site will be updated with the latest golf industry news on a regular basis, and we will also publish periodic features exclusive to the website. And this is just the beginning – we will develop the website during 2010 and beyond to ensure it serves the European golf trade as effectively as possible.

Operation Orlando

We are launching www.sgbgolf.co.uk with the most extensive showcase feature we have ever published; our product review from the 2010 PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, January 27-30. We could not fit in every exhibitor, but our showcase highlights the most significant and eye-catching products on display last month.

You go all the way to Orlando for the PGA Show – being more or less on Tiger’s doorstep – and he doesn’t even turn up! What’s that all about? I even arrived at the convention centre really early one morning just in case Tiger’s show tactics were similar to the dew-sweeping ones he adopts for his Open practice rounds – but no joy.

Nike did not make it past the pre-show demo day either, but honestly, you can understand that. Nike executives have been drilled not to discuss the Tiger situation beyond the company’s official statement: “Tiger has been part of Nike for more than a decade. He is the best golfer in the world and one of the greatest athletes of his era. We look forward to his return to golf. He and his family have Nike's full support.”

Emerging from the pile of pretzels and press releases accumulated at the Autumn trade show season is news that the PGA is teaming up with buying group TGi to create what they hope will become “Europe’s largest trade show and education event”, starting in October 2010.

This is an intriguing prospect and it raises a couple of questions. Will this expansion in Harrogate accelerate the year-on-year shrinkage taking place in Munich? And perhaps trickiest of all, where will the Foremost group fit in to this shifting landscape?

SGB Golf is bound for Munich - in person and in print - as this issue is being distributed at the show.

There will be some major brands missing from Golf Europe this year, but on the other hand a great deal of the trade's most important players will be exhibiting and there is a lot to look forward to at the show. Both Callaway and Nike will be displaying new product ranges for the first time, and it will be very interesting to witness the rebirth of the MacGregor brand in Europe, via Golfsmith.

A characteristic of the golf market that I particularly appreciate is that major product launches are spread throughout the year, particularly with hardware. It keeps the manufacturers, retail trade, media and consumers alike on our toes.

The 138th Open Championship was a golf tournament of conflicting factors and emotions. Tom Watson would have been a champion more exalted than all of Padraig Harrington, Nick Faldo and even Seve Ballesteros; yet Stewart Cink stole in - dressed like a great big Nike key lime pie for goodness sake - to become a winner about as welcome as a hook off Turnberry's 10th.

The question of whether equipment technology is making the game too easy for tournament professionals is contentious.

The AGM of the British Golf Industry Association, which was held at Woburn on April 6, may already seem a distant memory to those who attended. There are parts of snooker player Willie Thorne's after-dinner speech that are not yet distant enough mind you, so I won't address that, but from the more important pre-dinner meeting, the BGIA is to be applauded for providing quality information the trade can work with.

I had the opportunity to speak to Greg Norman on the phone recently - just another day at SGB Golf you understand. On the subject of coping with economic "hiccups", Norman said: "There are pundits who say it might take 20 years [to recover] and there are others who say it might take seven or eight months. I believe it will happen sooner rather than later, because there is so much cash sloshing around on the sidelines not earning much interest, and people like to see the percentage return on their investments up into double digits, so I think that money will get back to work very quickly."