Scottish golf clubs still losing members, says SGU chief

MEMBERSHIP of Scottish golf clubs dropped by a further two per cent last year and the decline looks set to continue in the forseeable future, according to Scottish Golf Union chief exective Hamish Grey.

With close to 90 per cent of the 550-odd clubs in the home of golf having now submitted membership figures for the full 2011 season, the picture shows a continuing struggle for a number of them to survive.

In terms of adult males alone, around 3,400 have given up memberships in the last year, increasing the overall drop to seven per cent from the peak of 176,000 in the mid-2000s.

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“We’re two per cent down, compard to 1.4 per cent last year and that had been improving,” said Grey of a situation he attributes mainly to the state of the economy but also due to the hand dealt by Mother Nature in recent years.

“A lot of clubs have it tough year-on-year and we’re not expecting this will bottom out for another couple of years at least, I think that’s just realistic,” he added.

“Unfortunately we can’t do anything about the economy. We’ve also had two severe winters and a poor summer. You do question the value of your membership more in those circumstances. It would be helpful to have a good summer, but we haven’t worked out a way to control that.”

Scotland isn’t alone in losing golf club members. It’s a headache being faced by most countries across Europe. Even Sweden is feeling the pinch. From having 80,000 members in 1982, it peaked at 600,000 around 2000 but is now now down in the low 500,000s.

“It used to be that if you weren’t a member of a club, you couldn’t play golf in Sweden, but now it’s different, there’s pay-to-play and some people take that option instead of membership,” said Grey.

In Scotland, only two courses are believed to have shut their doors in recent years due to falling membership. The most recent was Whitemoss in Perthshire, where the farmer gave up a losing battle and turned the course back into agricultural use.

“The only other clubs are those playing municipal courses who have largely combined,” observed Grey. “But there are plenty of clubs with challenges out there as times are still tough. Clubs have done a great job cutting costs, but there’s a point where you cut so much and you don’t have a product. We’re doing our membership campaign again this year, giving marketing tools and sharing good practice because there’s already a great deal out there.”

The recent appointment of three club development officers, the funding for whom is coming from the SGU reserve fund, is aimed at helping fill spare capacity on courses, while it is also hoped that clubgolf, the national junior initiative, will have a positive effect on club membership in the long term.

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“Clubgolf is still quite young, but we want to see more return on that investment. The next challenge with that is the retention of members, but we are well-positioned to take that on,” said Grey.

“For instance, we’re working very hard on providing quality coaching with the PGA – the volunteers can take them so far but they need a PGA pro to develop them properly – as we want to turn these youngsters into members for life.”

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