Golspie and Greenburn Golf Clubs join crusade to help NHS

Golspie Golf Club, having opened up online bookings for 2021 earlier than usual, will donate half of that revenue to the NHS. Picture: Gary Wilkinson

Golspie in the Highlands and Greenburn in West Lothian have become the latest Scottish golf clubs to come up with “thank-you” initiatives for NHS workers fighting the coronavirus crisis.

At Golspie, the club has decided to donate 50 per cent from online bookings for 2021 to the NHS, having opened up that potential revenue stream much earlier than normal due to the current closure of courses because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Greenburn, meanwhile, will offer half-price golf to all NHS staff, with no requirement to take out a membership, until the end of this year after being encouraged by a member to come up with something positive amid the current doom and gloom surrounding golf clubs.

The gestures follow Duddingston in Edinburgh deciding to nominate one of its medals later in the year as a fund-raiser for the NHS, an idea that is set to be copied by numerous other clubs, as well as Cowdenbeath in Fife offering free membership to NHS workers, though that still required a green fee to be paid to Fife Golf Trust.

“When all this started, I picked up on Duddingston thinking about having an open competition later in the year to raise funds for the NHS,” Alasdair MacDougall, Golspie’s treasurer cum secretary, told The Scotsman. “I thought that was a great idea, but I also thought ‘what could we do that could happen a bit quicker and help us at the same time?’

“I came up with the idea of us opening up the bookings for 2021 earlier than normal, something we’d normally do in September or October. While we are doing pretty well as a club, we wouldn’t normally get a lot of online bookings for the following year, but I felt doing it earlier than usual was worthwhile.

“I also thought that giving part of that income to the NHS was a tweak on what is being done at some other clubs in terms of getting advance bookings as well for 2021.”

The offer at Golspie, where the course was designed by James Braid, is currently on bookings made before the end of June, though, depending on the uptake, that could be extended until the end of September.

“We had more in the bank than Brora,” added MacDougall, a volunteer, of Golpsie’s near neighbours having been the first club in Scotland to publicly express fear that it “might not exist” beyond the coronavirus closure then receiving around £70,000 in support in just over a week.

“When all this started, it looked as though we will get through the summer with the cash we’ve got and, with a bit of luck, the course will have re-opened in July or August.

“Our urgency was probably less than Brora’s. But, having said that, we have virtually no money coming in at the moment, which, of course, is in common with just about every club at the moment. We are not any different to most clubs who are visitor-income orientated.

“We are in between Dornoch and Brora, which is a great selling point in itself. We have similar problems to Brora, just on slightly different scales. They have about £300k per year in terms of visitor income and we are £100k per year. They may potentially lose that £300k and we can potentially lose £100k.

“We’ve taken a similar approach as most other clubs in terms of furloughing. The only guy we’ve kept on is our head greenkeeper and we are also paying our guys 100 per cent as we feel we are good employers. We just need some income coming in and can pick it up again next year.”

Now into a fourth week of being closed, golf clubs with a rateable value of between £18,001 and £50,999 still seem to be waiting for a one-off Scottish Government grant of £25,000.

“As of this moment, we haven’t yet got our money and I think it’s the same with the other clubs in the Highlands. But we expect to get that quite soon. What exactly that will be for us, I am not quite sure,” said MacDougall.

“We have a rateable value that is just under the threshold. But we have separate rateable values for the clubhouse and the course. If you put the two together, in theory we should get the £25,000, depending on how they treat it. That is very important to us as we have very little else coming in other than the monthly direct debits of the members.”

Greenburn’s gesture to NHS staff once the course in Fauldhouse is open again has no strings attached, though club officials are hoping that giving people a taste of what is on offer could lead to the odd new member being attracted going forward.

“One of our members, I think his sister and one of her friends work for the NHS, asked us if we could do something,” said treasurer Alex Hunter. “Obviously, we’ve also got people working in the NHS as well, so we thought it would be a great gesture to offer others in the NHS the ability to come and play our course.

“If one person pays, the other goes for free. If two people play, the other two go free. We will see how it goes until the end of the year and, if it proves popular, we will look at offering them reduced membership if they want to take that up in the long term.

“People think it is not costing us anything, but that’s what we term as ‘introduced guests’ as revenue that we are giving away. You are happy to do your bit if you can where you can,though, at the moment. There’s a lot of clubs taking that view at the moment, which is great.”