Diary Of A Secret Club Golfer: We Must Open Up Our Doors To Save Club Golf

While this country’s more prestigious golfing venues are flying high thanks to huge visitor incomes, lower-tier clubs not on the tourist trails are struggling to make ends meet. Second-level clubs must start thinking outside the box.

I was reading last week about the new clubhouse at Royal Dornoch. It cost them £13.9 million. Can you imagine your golf club having that amount of money at their disposal? I certainly can’t.

But then again, the rack rate green fee at my club isn’t £360, as it is at Royal Dornoch for 2026. The massive inflation of green fees, driven by the influx of American golfers to the premier golf venues in the UK since COVID has left many of our best-known courses with very healthy bank balances.

There’s an ever-increasing wealth gap in club golf because, on the flip side, facing constantly rising costs and, unable to attract the American market, normal golf clubs have been feeling the pinch. Many clubs in this country are sailing dangerously close to the wind.

I think many clubs need a dramatic rethink to stay afloat. One of the most obvious things they can do is, in my opinion, to open the clubhouse to the public.

Yes, it will require a constitutional change at many members’ clubs and an application for a different license. But that’s not beyond the wit of man and woman.

If clubs run their clubhouses like restaurants and open the useful spaces to all, they can build a business to help pay for the running costs of the course.

That seems patently obvious to me. Most clubhouses have tremendous potential to be run as successful restaurants. You have a dining room and bar ready to go, you have a lovely big car park and many clubs are close to towns and villages… Ideal!

I say open up your doors, employ a great chef or install a great franchise and start making a name for yourselves as a gastronomic hotspot in your area (one that also happens to have a golf course attached.)

Do you agree that more clubhouses should be open to the public? Let me know in the comments box below.

Members might complain they don’t like the place being too busy, but it’s better than not having the place at all if the money runs out. And in my mind, it’s better than having to stump up more each year in subs to plug the holes in a sinking ship.

Clubs must be proactive to find alternative income. Could the dining room be used for functions like weddings and funerals? Is there a space that could be used for exercise classes or as a meeting room?

Could you find space for gym equipment or a squash court even.

The average members’ club must change from the model that worked fine in the 20^th century. It no longer works to make the clubhouse and other facilities for members and paying golfers only.

I say open it all up and start generating some cash! The Pilates instructor, families with troops of hungry kids, the funeral mourners and wedding bashers can start paying for the maintenance of the greens equipment and upkeep of the course…

It’s surely preferable than us members having to shell out hundreds more to cover those non-stop climbing costs.