Martin Dempster: Ideas on reviving Scottish clubs

Published on Monday 8 February 2010 22:11

IT WAS the tag line that caught my eye. After all, it's not often an email lands in your inbox titled 'Traditional Scottish Golf: Ideas for Revival'. It had been sent by a Scotsman reader and made interesting reading.

While the author asked to remain anonymous, his ideas deserve a public airing because, as he says, the "competitive duplication of effort being conducted by smaller clubs across the land" is something that should be discussed on a national stage.

While many explanations exist for the current plight affecting so many Scottish golf clubs, we can't just sit around and accept the situation. "A platform is necessary if good ideas are to be pulled together into a 'rescue plan'," said our man, outlining why he'd been stirred in action. "Some area forums have been held, but there does not appear to be any coalescence of thinking."

It's all about people coming up with ideas and I believe a few of the following are worth considering.

Differential memberships: the weekly medal is an integral part of the week for fewer golfers, so why not charge an upper rate for those who wish to compete 'off the back tees' and a lower rate for those whose priority is social golf? This might tempt more casual golfers into taking out memberships.

Revise the Scottish Golf Card: currently a golfer can belong to a non-course owning, and thus inexpensive, club and purchase an SGC for 10. The golfer can then have half-price golf across much of Scotland. If the golfer only plays say ten rounds a year for 150, why bother to join a course-owning club at 500 per annum?

Phase out 2-for-1 deals: the proliferation of cheap deals is choking income streams.

Members' guests: the traditional reduced rate should be confined to those who are members of clubs. Surely an incentive to become a club member? Why cut our own throats by gifting golf to the casual golfer?

Free membership for under 12s: let's get youngsters on the course. Take tees way forward, give them some fun, bind them to the game. Keep fees way down right through to age 25.

Review the role of the club professional: the traditional pro's retainer is 'past its sell-by date'. Where the retainer has been maintained, this is often at a greater per capita cost to the club. Use the pro's business acumen in promoting the game; insist on the pro developing and running the junior golf section.

Campaign to save the country's golf heritage: bombard MSPs (letters and surgeries) demanding support for local clubs. Let's all campaign to demand a 'survival fund' for Scottish golf.

Consortium procurement: for example, what is the point of committee members scratching around attempting to achieve the best price for fertiliser, beer and servicing of machinery?

Share resources: encourage local clubs to work together to buy and share specialist machinery; avoid further staff losses by sharing labour at quiet times.

You see, I said that email made interesting reading. In fact, I'd bet that there's at least one of those you've actually thought about yourself and perhaps even debated at your club, just as our man has at his. For many, these are issues that matter a damn sight more than the world waiting for Tiger Woods to get back playing golf after coming out of his sex addiction clinic.

Club golfers are passionate about their clubs. They might like watching Woods and the rest of the world's top players on TV and, occasionally, in the flesh but the most important thing to them is their own game, no matter whether it's every day, once a month or once every blue moon.

Lots of club golfers turn up for their game and are oblivious to what's going on behind the scenes, caring only about the course being in good condition and the clubhouse still being open after they've finished for that well-earned refreshment.

Clearly, there are others who are thinking long and hard about 'ideas for revival' and the more of those people there are the better as clubs need to be pro-active to blow away some of those black clouds hanging above them.

Tiger Woods' quick return unlikely

BEFORE you get excited about the possibility of seeing Tiger Woods back on the golf course as early as next week, it is news to his caddie that the world No 1 is contemplating an appearance in the Accenture World Match Play.

"The stories stating Tiger will return at the matchplay have no truth to them," Williams has been reported as saying, and you'd think the Kiwi would know. Then again, Williams said he didn't know a thing about the string of affairs Woods was having before he ended up in a sex addiction clinic in the States, so we shouldn't really be surprised about anything in this sorry tale. When Woods does reappear, though, it will be a disgrace if he doesn't heed the advice of Tom Watson, a true golfing legend, and show some humility. That's the least the game deserves for the way he hoodwinked us all.

'Mechanic' on call for Monty

AFTER losing at Valhalla the last time out, it's important Europe get their hands back on the Ryder Cup this year and you'd have to admit, surely, that things are shaping up very nicely for Colin Montgomerie.

The likes of Martin Kaymer, Robert Karlsson, Lee Westwood, Alvaro Quiros, Edoardo Molinari, Paul Casey and Rory McIlroy have come flying out of the traps in 2010, while Luke Donald's second-placed finish on the PGA Tour in Los Angeles will also have gone down well with the European captain. So, too, I reckon will the win by Miguel Angel Jimenez in the Dubai Desert Classic, even though it came at the expense of Westwood, the man who is surely going to be Montgomerie's on-course leader at Celtic Manor.

While the Scot is excited about the young talent that is going to be at his disposal, he'll not be unhappy to have at least one forty-something in his ranks and no-one would fit the bill better than the Spaniard, who has three Ryder Cups under his belt already.

He might be unconventional – the sight of him puffing on his cigar and sorting his pony tail as he waited for Westwood to finish on Sunday made me chuckle – but the man known as 'The Mechanic' certainly has an engine that's ticking over very nicely at the age of 46.