Why Scottish golf clubs should be fearful after Hirsel’s sudden closure

Make no mistake, that was a huge call by the Coldstream club’s management committee and, while maybe not to those who had been closely involved, the  development definitely came out of the blue for the wider golfing community.

“We were only made aware of the current situation in the last few days,” Robbie Clyde, the CEO of Scottish Golf, told The Scotman after being contacted about the first course closure in this country since the game enjoyed a spike in both membership and participation levels during the Covid pandemic, when it was one of the first sports to be allowed in the move out of lockdown.

At the time of Clyde’s comment, the aforementioned management committee had shed little light on the important details about why a club that was founded in 1948 is no longer in business and, even following a Facebook post over the weekend, that remains the case.

“Very sadly, we can no longer survive as the expenditure to run our course and clubhouse exceeds the income we are generating,” it read. “Our Open competitions were always so well supported by both members and golfers who travelled from the Scottish Borders, Northumberland, the Lothians, the west and further afield. Thank you and I hope you will all have happy memories of your time playing our course and enjoying our fabulous facilities.

“To all our visiting and society parties, thank you for choosing our course. So many of you came year after year and we certainly appreciated that. We hope you, too, have happy memories of time spent at the Hirsel.”

Count me in that group of people. Having grown up in Berwickshire, I spent a lot of time in Coldstream, either accompanying my dad to watch matches at an annual summer football cup in the town or to play golf for Eyemouth, my home club at the time, at the Hirsel.

When I first visited, it was a nine-holer, as was the case at that time at the two other Berwickshire courses - Duns and Eyemouth -  before they were all extended to 18 holes. The Hirsel, in particular, was just a fabulous nine-hole course and, though decisions taken when they were to extend all three of those courses were maybe right at the time, that is perhaps now not the case 26 years on at the Hirsel.

Unless there’s more to this particular closure than meets the eye, then what’s just happened at the Hirsel must surely have set alarm bells ringing at lots of golf clubs around the country, with a distinct possibility that others will suffer the same fate in the coming few years.

It had been rumoured that the membership at the Hirsel had fallen drastically but, according to the figures submitted to Scottish Golf on an annual basis, it seems they had actually been pretty static in recent years. As acknowledged by the club, it had also been “well supported” by visitors while groups and societies had returned “year after year”.

Taken purely at face value, you could look at all of those things and come to the conclusion that it might probably be in a better state of health than lots of other clubs, but the bottom line seems to be that operating costs have clearly spiralled and, as a consequence, it has reached a point where it’s become a loss-making business.

How many other clubs are already in the same position or close to it? Kirkcaldy Golf Club, where Old Tom Morris designed his last course, is fighting for survival, as acknowledged by captain Brian Laing last week. “We are proactively working with our membership to agree and implement changes in our operating model which will help us adapt and navigate through this period of significant rises,” he said.

I’ve also heard a rumour about another Fife club being in dire straits after drainage issues last winter and please don’t kid ourselves here because there’s absolutely no denying that a good few clubs would already be closed if it hadn’t been for that unexpected boost from the unlikely source of a pandemic.

Prior to that, we’d lost Whitekirk, Lothianburn and Torphin Hill in the Edinburgh area, Eastwood on the outskirts of Glasgow, Brunston Castle in Ayrshire and Mouse Valley in Lanarkshire. Another Lanarkshire course, Hollandbush, Dalmuir in Clydebank and Caird Park in Dundee are only still open after council proposals were blocked earlier this year.

As operating costs keep increasing, clubs are coming under more pressure and, though there can be no denying that, through things that have happened in the past, it’s not the most popular organisation out there, Scottish Golf can certainly play a role in providing help in troubled times.

A team of regional development managers has been reimplemented around the country and the hope is that their expertise can be used by member clubs to at least keep memberships static and, hopefully, grow that through a big push on the women’s and girls’ front.

It’s no surprise, of course, that negative comments have been aimed at Open Play, Scottish Golf’s membership scheme for so-called nomadic golfers, in the wake of the Hirsel’s closure while the new World Handicap System has also come under fire due to many believing it is damaging the game.

What’s needed right now, though, is everyone trying to be as positive as possible because it stings to have lost a club like the Hirsel and every single club member out there in Scotland should be supporting in the first place but also promoting their respective clubs before it’s too late. And, yes, that also means actually spending time in clubhouses because they can be the heartbeat of communities.