Scratch cups are back and are bigger and better than ever

Scratch cups: for a long time they were the pinnacle of many a golf club’s yearly calendar. However, around the turn of the century and throughout the early 2000s they started to disappear. Clubs instead preferred to suit members instead of opening up the course to visitors, not to mention the handicap restrictions which scratch cups bring into play.

But now an initiative by the name of Top Golfer – set up by business partners Dermot Synnott and Robert Hill – is restoring scratch cups to the prestige they once enjoyed while also “giving golfers a taste of life on tour”. Not to mention injecting significant revenue into the Irish golf industry.

Top Golfer is an events company set up seven years ago by Synnott and Hill when they noticed the decline in senior (handicaps of four and less) and junior (handicaps of four to nine) scratch cups around the country.

Both had been working in the golf business for a number of years and spotted a gap in the market for elite, competitive events.

“We sat down one day and saw an opportunity to rejuvenate scratch cups,” Synnott says.

“We had been speaking to golf clubs and they had been saying that they had taken scratch cups off their schedule - there was no real sense of occasion for players playing in the events, members were looking to take tee times back for other events and so on.

“That was disappointing because there’s no doubt about it that a senior or a junior scratch cup is a prestigious event in any golf club’s calendar. So we spoke to golf clubs and asked if they would be interested in bringing back senior and junior scratch cups if we sponsored it and brought a sense of occasion for players. The players had lost interest because there was no real buzz about the event,” he says.

The idea originally came to Synnott and Hill after a conversation with seven-time European Tour winner Ronan Rafferty. The former Ryder Cup player was looking to get his son playing in scratch cups around the country but had noticed that the number of them was declining.

The two business partners took the idea and ran with it. After securing sponsorship deals with golf companies such as ECCO, Oakley and Motocaddy they now have over 10,000 single figure handicap registered members on their online database. The tour consists of events at 24 golf clubs such as Fota Island, Portmarknock, Powerscourt and Carlow, with points allocated depending on where you finish after which you are ranked in an order of merit. At the end of the season the top 50 in the order of merit go into the Nature Valley Play-Offs at Luttrelstown Castle. After that the top 24 qualify for the tour championship which is held over a weekend at the Slieve Russell resort in Co. Cavan to determine Ireland’s Top Golfer champion.

Arriving at a Top Golfer event is impressive. The course is decked out with sponsor hoardings and flags, you are greeted on arrival, given refreshments and there is a real buzz about the place. The sense of occasion is there and the junior or senior scratch cup is given the importance it deserves.

The main factor, as Synnott explains, is the focus on the golf club itself.

“Each event belongs to each individual golf club. So they will decide what green fee they want to charge, they’re responsible for creating the online timesheet and signing players in on the day. What we do is we help promote the event to our community of golfers, we go there on the day to meet and greet the players, give them snacks before they tee off and brand up the course.

“We have just over 4,000 players per season and 100 per cent of that green fee revenue goes into the golf clubs. So we feel that we’re doing more than our part to support the Irish golf industry. I doubt there’s any company or society out there who can say that they put 4,000 green fees into the Irish golf industry each year. So if you have an average green fee of, say, €30 and multiply it by 4,000 you’re talking about €120,000 going into Irish golf clubs.

“Based on our success we have a waiting list of 26 golf clubs looking to get onto the tour. So say for example Powerscourt this year, which is a new club for us, had a timesheet full from 7.30am to 2.30pm with a waiting list and 100 per cent of green fee revenue going into the club.”

At a time when many golf clubs are still struggling following the economic recession, this type of revenue is invaluable.

After hosting their inaugural senior and junior scratch cups this year, Gavin Hunt, general manager at Powerscourt Golf Club, explains the benefits of partnering with Top Golfer for such events.

“From a commercial perspective it’s very good because it’s generating revenue for us. So we pay Top Golfer a marketing fee to tap into their database and expertise and then they provide us with prizes in lieu of what we pay. So for us it’s a no-brainer really.

“In total we had 160 playing – 60 in the senior scratch cup and 100 in the junior scratch. The way we do it is online and it’s all pre-pay so it’s money in the bank for us.

“We could try and do an event like that ourselves but we’d never get the same level of interest in it because we’d be reliant on our own marketing, whereas when you’re doing it with Top Golfer they get straight to the market for you and that consists of a database of 10-15,000 names.”

[ www.topgolfer.ie ]