Douglas Connon insists he’s kept SGU on course

IT’S been an eventful 12 months for Douglas Connon. He’s been at the heart of a bitter battle in Scottish golf, lost a dear friend with the death of Adam Hunter and was very seriously ill himself when he was hit by septicaemia for the second time in a year.

There’s still a possibility he may lose a leg due to the illness but don’t dare offer him pity.

“There are people a lot worse off than me, so don’t portray me as someone sick and lucky to be alive,” he says at the end of an exclusive interview with The Scotsman.

The interview was set up ahead of Connon stepping down as chairman of the Scottish Golf Union this weekend. His illness, which returned with a vengeance just three days after he had joined Paul Lawrie in paying an emotional tribute to Hunter at his funeral in mid-October, has drained him of energy and caused frustration at having to deal with pressing matters by email or phone. “There’s nothing like getting in front of people face-to-face,” he says.

Prior to falling ill again – he was initially hospitalised in Mombasa at the end of a 380km walk in northern Kenya towards the end of 2010 – some would say Connon was too much in people’s faces, especially over the proposal to create a unified ruling body by an amalgamation of the Scottish Golf Union and the Scottish Ladies Golfing Association.

Following a jousting match that involved some dirty washing being aired in public, the plan was voted down by the men’s Area associations last spring.

Connon, who served as an army officer for nearly 30 years and was awarded an MBE in the Gulf Honours list in 1992, was criticised in some quarters for his handling of the affair but believes it was inevitable that “blood would be spilt on the carpet” in the bid to bring Scotland into line with most other golfing nations in the world as well as every other sport in this country.

“We could have taken two years and done a lot of smooth talking and all the rest of it,” he says. “Alternatively, there was the more blunt and in-your-face approach of ‘you know what guys, you have to understand that the clubs pay their money and they deserve to have a vote’.

“History will decide if my captaining of the ship was right or wrong, but it was always going to be a difficult call and I genuinely believe we will get there.”

Helped by Stewart Regan, the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, acting as an external facilitator at a get-together between SGU board members and representatives of the 16 Area associations in November, new life appears to have been breathed into the proposal, which received unanimous support from the ladies.

“On Sunday (at the SGU’s agm), the findings of a working group will go in front of all the Areas and I am absolutely confident they will agree that and that will form the basis of going forward,” adds Connon

“If I were a betting man, I would say very quickly there will be agreement with the amalgamation and I don’t say this to score any points at all but it won’t be dissimilar to the original proposal.

“I understand the Area’s concern because it [the proposal to change voting rights] probably did come out of the blue. It wasn’t the wolf closest to their sledge. But it needed to be addressed. This time next year or even in six months time I think we we will look back and ask what all the fuss was about.”

Connon, whose day job is managing director of corporate affairs for Alliance Trust, having previously filled a similar role at Aberdeen Asset Management, believes the ladies will benefit most intially from Scottish amateur golf being under one umbrella and says it will take time for any cost-saving to kick in.

“I think we need to be careful about over reliance on sportscotland money,” he warns. “In England, where they decided to amalgamate recently, one of the first decisions they came to was to put up their per capita charge to cover any future funding gap if Sport England pulled the rug out from under them. I’m not saying that is the way forward for us. I’m just saying that we need to be careful.”

He offers the same opinion on the SGU’s involvement in the process of top amateurs making the transition into professional golf. “It is not our responsibility and that would be the wrong use of club members’ money,” he claims. Instead, Connon sees the involvement of players like Paul Lawrie, Stephen Gallacher and Andrew Coltart in mentoring roles as the way ahead. Dean Robertson, another ex-European Tour player, now head performance coach at Stirling University, could have a role.

“We are such a small country and we need to involve people who have something to offer,” insists Connon. “I’m in favour of getting someone like Dean involved – we’ve met him a couple of times – and we would be failing in our duties if we didn’t do that and he was successful [at Stirling].”

Working more closely with golf clubs and improving performance at grassroots level are other areas Connon, who has served as chairman for three years after taking over from fellow Gullane resident Alistair Low, is keen to see money and energy devoted to by the governing body after he steps down and, first and foremost, bids to regain full health so that he can return to his professional life.

“It is up to others to sum up my spell but, personally, I don’t think I have anything to fear in terms of how I have conducted things as I feel I have done that with integrity,” he adds. “I also feel the SGU has moved on over that time. The board is now in its tenth year and the figures speak for themself. We are in good enough shape to do a risk assessment of reserves in the past year to free up some of the reserves for sustainable projects with the clubs while we are also punching above our weight in terms of sponsorship.”