Nick Rodger: Golf on the chopping block as another municipal course set for the axe

Anyway, according to the experts in the scientific study of minds and behaviours, the first of these four stages suggest that individuals are initially unaware of how little they know. They are, in effect, unconscious of their incompetence.  

Of course, these psychologists could always follow myself and some of my colleagues up the opening couple of holes at an Association of Golf Writers’ winter outing and they’ll soon discover, through a startling array of cursings, cussings, curiosities and calamities, that we are, in fact, extremely conscious of our relentless bloomin’ incompetence. The sports editor is very conscious of it too.

The good golfing folk of Dundee, meanwhile, are no doubt questioning the competence – surely not? – of their local councillors after it was announced that the Caird Park municipal course is set to be closed.

“Dundee is the fourth largest city in Scotland, and it could be left without a municipal golf course – that is disgraceful,” said the club captain, Ian Gordon.

In many quarters the decision, unsurprisingly, has gone down like a bag of spanners.

We all know that cash-strapped cooncils are faced with plugging the kind of vast black holes that the cosmic connoisseurs operating the NASA telescopes would be intrigued to peer into.

Not for the first time, the game that Scotland gave to the world is on the chopping block.

Of course, when you have schools being closed here, vital health and social care services being cut there and various cloths getting snipped everywhere, some folk will look at golf stamping its feet in a tantrum and have little sympathy. In the grand of scheme of things and all that.

But municipal courses have had a trying time in recent years. Once valued resources have withered on the vine and many of these affordable, accessible routes into golf have been locked up, fenced off and choked and tangled by the weeds of neglect and despair.

The demise of yet another public course in Dundee – the Camperdown facility was shut back in 2020 – is a particularly sore one given the proximity of the City of Discovery to the cradle of golf over the silvery Tay in St Andrews.

With an eye on current trends, good auld ‘Cairdy’ will probably become some massive cycle lane. Or a housing estate with access via a massive cycle lane.

The plight of these venues cropped up during the AIG Women’s Open at the Old Course in August when Martin Slumbers, who is retiring as the chief executive of the R&A, was asked to give his thoughts on the toils and troubles of the country’s municipals.

“I’m actually very concerned about it,” he said. “I think (the message to councils) is work with us a little bit more and help us explain that golf is good for people’s health. It’s good for the economy, it’s good for society, it’s good for the environment.

“If you look at the R&A’s jurisdiction, we have 62.3 million people consuming golf at the moment. There was a five million increase between 2016 and Covid, and five million more since Covid. We are going to need more facilities.”

This “consuming” of golf continues to evolve with ranges, simulators and entertainment facilities providing new markets with fresh opportunities away from the traditional green grass offerings.

The drive, meanwhile, towards shorter formats of the game, in this frantic age when leisure time seems to be shorter than a resigned sigh, continues.

Back in October, the R&A, in cahoots with various architects and industry experts, released a Golf for Smaller Spaces guide.

Guid things come in sma’ bulk and the 48-page manual details compact golf operations, the process of establishing scaled-down forms of the game and the commercial considerations that apply.

The idea is that if facilities – particularly those in cities or urban areas – can utilise the space they have, then golf becomes more accessible to a wider demographic.

Caird Park has both an 18-hole and a nine-hole layout. Could the council not consult the manual and fathom out a manageable product without shutting the entire thing completely?

Alas, the end is nigh. Anger and a sense of nostalgia abound. The ‘munis’ in certain areas of Scotland, of course, always had a certain, shall we say, je ne sais quoi.

Back in 1995, The Herald ran a story about various crime sprees at Caird Park. And no, it wasn’t concerning the shenanigans at one of the aforementioned Association of Golf Writers’ outings.

There were tales of players being mugged on the course, the clubhouse being robbed and fire-bombed, the vice-captain getting held at knifepoint and joyriders dumping torched cars on the fairways.

Nothing would focus the golfing mind over a tricky six-footer quite like a stolen Ford Escort suddenly screeching towards the sixth green, eh?

“A round of golf at Caird Park has been turned into a survival course,” stated The Herald.

Nearly 30 years on, Caird Park, it seems, has lost its own fight for survival.