GOLF: JOHN O'SULLIVANtalks to the owner of The European Club about the state of Irish golf and the challenges clubs face in the recession.

GOLF’S SCARS in the current recession are easy to discern. National newspapers, trade magazines and the internet carry advertisements for heavily discounted membership and green fees as clubs solicit business and look to replenish their rapidly dwindling list of constituents.

Few are immune to the strictures of the current financial climate but many golf clubs could have inoculated themselves more prudently by spending less frivolously in the boom time. Hindsight is an exact science but some of the bacchanalian outlay on clubhouse renovations and sundry other peripherals should have triggered alarm bells at the time.

Members and those who seek membership of golf clubs have less disposable income so value choices must be made. It’s never been easier or cheaper to join a golf club or play the game, something of a positive side effect to financially constrained times.

However, as prices plummet and clubs seek wriggle room in a competitive market, a recent addition to the Irish golfing firmament, the hotel and property-led golf developments, are in danger of disappearing into the black hole of insolvency. The majority of golf clubs will muddle through, some more adeptly than others. It’s an important distinction to separate the different categories rather than offering a one-size-fits-all analysis.

Pat Ruddy, author, journalist, golf course architect, owner of The European Club and passionate advocate of a sport nurtured from childhood, is perfectly placed to offer an overview on the impact of the recession on the golfing climate. He is adamant any analysis must be defined by what the sport means to different people, what are the objectives, standards and desires of any given place of golf. Who are they addressing?

He explained: “You have the public course which is aimed at everyone and very reasonably priced by tradition. Then you have Club A, the standard Irish golf club, which can be subdivided into two, metropolitan and country. Most of them happy to go along at a reasonably steady clip in life but occasionally causing one to wonder why golf was always more expensive on 80 acres near the city rather than 80 acres near a big town in the country.

“Then you have the larger, international orientated clubs; lovely golf but more expensive. Of recent vintage, you have the development golf courses with hotels and houses. Around those a great deal of the negative publicity centres because property enterprise is failing and because golf is the name over the door people say that golf is in trouble.

“Golf as a game isn’t really in trouble. If a hotel fails or housing fails it doesn’t necessarily mean that 90 per cent of Irish golfers lose anything: 90 per cent of people weren’t going to play there anyway because of the price. You can’t generalise. There is no one solution to fit all.

“It’s wonderful what’s happening at the moment from one perspective and to a good degree that golf has become cheap again in many places. The average golfer, whoever that means, can get a game and a sandwich thrown in or a bowl of soup. That’s wonderful as long as it is not so reasonable that the bills can’t be paid.

“If the squeeze downwards gets unrealistic, which it is tending to do in my perception – people are expecting too much for too little – and the intake doesn’t pay the bills then the cheap golf will disappear because the golf itself will disappear. There is also a shameful element riding on the coat-tails of the less fortunate; those on six figure salaries who plead poverty.”

How the money has been and is spent in clubs impacts significantly on debt levels. Ruddy offers an interesting analogy on the philosophy of similarly sized golf clubs on different sides of the country. “I am privileged, but I am bound to privacy, to see the accounts in a good many places.

“In general terms, it is quite amazing that a very fine 18 hole golf facility in the west of Ireland can make a profit on a turnover of half a million to three quarters of a million euro; whereas a slightly more sophisticated unit, depending on your definition, in the east of the country or indeed in the south west can make a loss with a turnover of €2 million.

“Some place between profitability at €700,000, you’ll come to a loss at three times that income. This indicates difficulties and some of the answers lie in the way people spend money. How can it cost €1.3 million more to maintain grass on 120 acres at point A as opposed to point B? Golf courses are just farms maintained in grassland. They’re not anything mystical.

“Part of the trouble is the escalation in this ‘spendamania’ culture in some places. If the difference in year to year trading is a multiple of three from point A to point B, the spending in capital set-ups and capital improvements – where they build new clubhouses – then how can it be 10 times more in one place than another?”

Ruddy believes how a club views itself and its niche in the golfing landscape is more important than whether a committee or business person presides over policy. Mistakes are common to both. He says: “It all comes down to the old saying, to some degree, ‘easy come easy go’.

“A committee may have access to money which is not their own and act very responsibly, very wisely and an individual business person with a stack of chips there can spend too freely and only become truly conversant with the situation when the stack is gone. It’s a human frailty to be open to injury in this area.

“It’s the same in every business and not peculiar to golf. It’s so easy to spend when there is a big heap of money there. One place came to me, well one person from a committee, and asked what they should spend on a new shed for the greenkeepers. I told them I couldn’t answer that but I could tell this person what would be spent.

“He enquired as to how I would know that. I replied that I know from observation the way your club behaves. You will not spend a penny less than a million. The word of advice I offered was to go out the road and find a farmer who has the same acreage – he’s changing the crops on the land three times a year, you’re just maintaining grass and changing nothing – and ask him what he’d spend on a shed.

“He’d probably suggest that it would be raving mad to spend more than €200,000. The club (in question) spent €1.3 million. The modern demands of health and safety come into focus. I am not deriding them. To spend €1.3 million on a shed, when you already have a shed, is a big spend on a shed.”

He cites an example from William Gibson’s history of Irish golf and a particular picture of Royal Portrush’s first clubhouse. It was essentially a hut. Some clubs fixated on constructing marble and mahogany shrines that have become sparsely populated, financial millstones.

“When I was a kid in the 1950s in Connacht, there were 28 clubs in the province and only two of them, Galway and Co Sligo, had clubhouses built of stone. The rest were sheds. When you went to an open day you went for the golf. There was re-entry (to the competition) if you blew up and good days were had.

“The ladies were divine; they made salads and apple tarts and fed their warriors and everyone went out to play more golf. They were happy days.

“That’s the essential thing not to lose sight of: to add sophistication is glorious and lovely if you can afford it. We have gone to a new place. We don’t go to golf any more, we go out for a day. We don’t have dinner in the middle of the day any more, we have lunch. At night we have a meal. All the language has changed. Instead of a sandwich and a beer, you’re having a meal.

“It has a big impact on all factors including the length of time it takes to engage in golf. You have to powder and dress to go to the club, undress, dress to go out; then you play the golf, undress, dress and powder for the meal.

“Suddenly you’re into an eight, nine, 10-hour production whereas the central thing if you are a golfer is the golf, which shouldn’t take more than three and a half hours. The social adds-on are glorious but they tend to blur the lines. It has moved towards a social activity with the golf an element therein; rather than being the element.

“Someone might complain about the cost of a game of golf. I’d say, ‘sir, but you’re royalty’. You get up in the morning for a game of golf and the gardeners are out raking the bunkers and cutting the grass for your coming. The cleaners are in making sure the palace (clubhouse) is ready; the chefs are getting the fry on at 7.30am because you’ll come in looking for one. You couldn’t get one in an Irish golf club 20 years ago but you’re demanding one so the chef has to be in.

“Then you plough up the place with your clubs and walk through the bunkers without raking them so all the servants have to rush out and put it back together while you’re dining. Royalty did that in times past but they did it at the point of a sword. You don’t have a sword so you have to pay.”

Self-professed as a person who is careful and looks to avoid debt, Ruddy wanted a golf course of his own; the trappings of grandeur were irrelevant. It remains a prescient decision. He possesses an outstanding course with understated, complementary facilities. Many clubs took a different tack and are paying a high price.

Ruddy offers a vignette by way of explanation.

“A funny thing happened in Irish golf in the last 25 years. When Mount Juliet came along and then the K Club there was a huge change in the way many clubs thought. When I started building The European Club in the mid-80s the most expensive green fee was about £20; that was Portmarnock. I based my initial thinking that one day I would achieve that donation from people and all would be well. I would grow old and fat on honey.

“But then Mount Juliet came along and everyone thought the late Tim Mahony was crazy. He was going to charge £60 for a game of golf: what a fool, where did he think he was going?

“And then Michael Smurfit came and charged £90, drawing the same response; a madman. But they got x amount at that. Now clubs who wouldn’t encourage visitors on a Saturday and Sunday suddenly formed marketing committees and went after this business.

“Clubs became businesslike and ceased being clubs. Suddenly it was worthwhile being nice to visitors on a weekend because they were going to give you £100. They changed their whole business plan. Then they started to feed them free of charge, giving the gifts of golf balls when their bags were full of them, pencils when they already had them. This cost significant money.

“Mount Juliet and the K Club transformed Irish golf in that they started charging membership and green fees somewhat comparable to the upper end internationally. Irish golf moved from the backwater, simple and cheap to a supercharged new place. Nearly all other clubs started versions of the same thing.

“They tried to spend all this money that was coming in, became over-dependent on visitors. Some became dependent on visitors’ fees to the extent of 70 or 80 per cent of their income. That was okay if the numbers kept flowing.”

The issue of golfing tourism prompted Ruddy to write to the then Minister for Sport and Tourism, John O’Donoghue, after the latter observed Irish golf was too dear. The politician’s comments appeared on a website for Scottish tourism. “I told him he was shooting us in the foot.

“Price and value are different things to different people. He wanted to get one price fits all. Cheap golf isn’t necessarily about what tourism golf is about; in fact tourism golf is about getting the biggest price you can consistent with the satisfaction of the person spending the money and the likelihood of them returning for more.

“Tourism is not about selling everything cheaply to keep people deliriously happy while you go bankrupt. I told him to go to a certain course, the best value in town at €10, but that he wouldn’t find a single tour bus there.

“It’s ironic that post the Ryder Cup (K Club) that was meant to brand Irish golf as the premium destination in the world – the best links, the best courses, the best place to come golfing – that in the intervening period we are now the Aldi and Lidl of golf. I find that ironic and sad. They’ve given up largely on the premium brand.

“Advertisement in international magazines, ‘come and play four courses for €100’; these are Bord Fáilte ads. This is a frightening shift from the years when millions of pounds were spent establishing how good we are.”

Ruddy believes the most

important tool available to Irish clubs in their bid to financially survive the recession is a ruthlessly honest self-appraisal. “You must have crystal clear vision and it better be a true one of what you are as a golf place.

“If you think you are less good than you are or you think that you are better than you are; everything you do won’t have the optimum beneficial effect. It’s about being sure you are where you think you are. The second thing is look around and identify the people that would like to join you as members or guests; interface with them.

“There’s no point in a five-star hotel trying to sell burgers at McDonalds’ prices: a McDonalds burger can be lovely at €1.50 but it’s going to cost you €20 in the Shelbourne. Clubs must be honest about what segment of the golfing population domestically and/or globally is relevant to them.”

Sport is engaged in a fight for the shrinking disposable income and golf is just one of the constituents. Pitching accurately and without spin to the right market is an essential starting point.