Golfers know that a day at the links can be twice as difficult when much of a round is spent playing out of the rough.

For companies in the golf accessories business like Springfield-based ForeFront Holdings, playing from the rough has long been par for the course.

Statistics bear out that the number of people playing golf, and thus buying tees, divot tools, bags, head covers and other golf-related items, has remained relatively flat through the years.

For ForeFront, that means revenue growth derives mainly from stealing market share or acquiring similar businesses. To that end, ForeFront is currently at work trying to do what no company like it has done before—consolidating everything in the golf accessory market (save balls and clubs) by acquiring and/or licensing leading brands to market through its distribution channel.

Success would be the equivalent of playing routinely from the fairway.

Based just north of Nashville, ForeFront is the result of a 2004 merger of companies—Massachusetts-based Miller Golf with Springfield-based Datrek International—a move engineered by majority owner Stanford International Bank Ltd., an affiliate company of the Stanford Financial Group. A more recent example of Stanford’s aggressive acquisition and roll-up strategy is ForeFront’s late 2006 purchase of Florida-based Burton Golf, the “Cadillac” of golf bag makers.

ForeFront is also aggressively wielding its 8,500 points of sale to attract licensed products into its fold. Recent examples include Top of the World hat company, owners of one of the precious few NCAA hat licenses but a company that had not previously been in the golfing niche. Finnish watchmaker Suunto, a dominant supplier in the scuba diving market, also found a partner in Forefront after developing a new wrist-top computer capable of measuring a golfer’s swing length, speed, rhythm and timing.

Tom Stine, co-founder of Golf Datatech, a retail market research firm in Florida, says ForeFront’s plan to provide one-stop-shopping to retailers ranging from Wal-Mart to club shop pros has merit.

“What they are trying to do conceptually makes a lot of sense,” Stine says. “But, of course, execution is different. There are some companies that don’t want to give up their business.”

Amid that fragmented environment, ForeFront has certainly taken its lumps the last two years. CEO Mike Hedge readily admits he hasn’t had much to be “chest pounding” about from an earnings standpoint. But he predicts a positive turn in 2007.

For two years, Hedge has been building the company’s infrastructure and putting a management team in place to execute his strategy. Better financial results will no doubt cause investors to take a closer look at what the once sleepy little golf company in Springfield is doing.