Another Scottish club is struggling to survive

Prestwick St Cuthbert Golf Club has become the latest Scottish golf club to be in danger of closing down.

The Ayrshire club has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise £70,000.

According to The Scotsman, the club had £600,000 in the bank two years ago but that has been spent while a Capital Gains Tax liability believed to be for £90,000 has been “kicked down the road” for seven years.

Organised by the club’s general manager, Sarah Eckford, the GoFundMe campaign raised more than £3,000 in its first two days.
“Like many community organisations, we are facing financial challenges,” stated the club.

“With rising costs of maintenance, operations, development and other financial pressures all threatening our ability to continue providing the golf facilities that have been supporting the local community for over 125 years.

“We are asking for your help to ensure that all our members and juniors continue to grow, develop and enjoy the sport for years to come.”

The £70,000 is being targeted to improve the course maintenance, upgrade club facilities and support junior and community initiatives.

“Every donation, no matter the size, will contribute directly to the preservation and growth of Prestwick St Cuthbert Golf Club,” states the GoFundMe campaign. “Whether you’re a lifelong golfer, a local supporter, or simply a lover of the game, your generosity will make a real difference and help us develop a great facility.

“Together, we can ensure that Prestwick St. Cuthbert Golf Club continues to be a cornerstone of our community and a place where golfers of all ages and skill levels can thrive.”

In addition, the club has become embroiled in a legal battle with its own members after it tried to impose annual subscription fees on certain individuals who were previously exempt.

A planned Special General Meeting in December was cancelled 24 hours before it was due to take place, with the club saying it is “preparing to enter into mediation” with the affected members.

This all comes after Hirsel Golf Club in the Scottish Borders filed for bankruptcy after the twin pincers of declining membership and rising costs closed in. Torrance Park in Motherwell, owned by the Murray Estates development firm of former Rangers chairman Sir David Murray, closed for good in October after running at a loss for several years.

Kirkcaldy Golf Club in Fife is reportedly drawing up survival plans while about 30 miles up the road, Scotscraig, the 13th oldest course in the world, is seeking outside investment to secure its future following losses of nearly £200,000 last year. The latter has been in discussions with Kingsbarns, co-host of the annual Dunhill Links Championship, about a possible tie-up.

The prestigious Musselburgh Golf Club in East Lothian voted in favour of an immediate £100 levy on all members to deal with a “short-term cash flow issue” arising from repairs to the clubhouse. The venue, which staged a final qualifier for The Open when it was last held at Muirfield in 2013, has insisted it is not in debt nor facing financial difficulties other than its repair costs.

And Caird Park Golf Course in Dundee has announced it will close down on April 30, 2025, while the future of Broughty Castle remains in the balance.

Industry veteran Kevin Fish of CCL Services says the pandemic boom that arrested two decades of decline in club memberships is now coming off the boil and with that many private members’ clubs have gone back to the pre-Covid days of hanging on by their fingertips.

“It’s actually the clubs in the middle tier who are under the most pressure, and that’s the same in most businesses – either be the best or the cheapest – but the ones in the middle are struggling,” he noted.

“It just so happens that in Glasgow there are more middle-tier clubs than there are in any other part of Scotland, so there is going to be an extra spotlight on the middle tier in Glasgow and I can assure you that the accounts I’ve seen, the typical club is not making enough surplus to replace the assets when they diminish.

“What you find is they are just about breaking even, or just about making a profit, but when the clubhouse roof blows off, there has been no preparation. That’s where clubs realise for decades they have not been doing enough to safeguard their future – they’ve always kicked the can down the road for the next committee. That’s where the big problem is.”

He says resignations have returned to their pre-pandemic average run rate of about 6.5 percent. This ranges from roughly three percent for larger clubs up to nine percent for smaller clubs.

CCL has gathered financial data on more than 250 members’ clubs in the UK, about half of which are in Scotland. Fish said outside the category of those with ‘trophy’ courses there are a growing number of JAMs – those ‘just about managing’.

“I have been doing this for 25 years now, and for two clubs [in Scotland] to go bust in the last three months – the Hirsel and Torrance Park – and for two others to declare they are in serious trouble, that’s the most open they have ever been about [financial trouble] in my time,” he said.

It is thought that new course construction led to a 20 percent increase in the number of golf holes in Scotland between 1980 and 2000, after which club memberships started a downward descent that lasted until the pandemic boom more than four years ago.

“Could we be in a situation where we are in a market correction where in every area everybody in the middle to low tier is just hoping that they survive longer than the club next door?

“Because don’t forget what happens when a club goes bust: you might have 100, 200, 300 or 400 members all looking for a new home, and suddenly all of the clubs in that region no longer look threatened, they suddenly look buoyant, and that’s just demand and supply.

“So could we be looking at a Hirsel and Torrance Park in every region in Scotland? Yes, I think we could.”

“It’s not an easy life being in a golf club at the moment,” says Christopher Spencer of the Scottish Golf & Club Managers Association. “Members don’t necessarily understand their club is probably more susceptible to cost increases than you are at home, the prime example being wages.

“There are a lot of staff who will be on the minimum wage. If that’s gone up by 10 percent in a year, purely to cover that cost you have to reduce the service you are providing, which invariably leads to a number of complaints, or you’re going to have to put your subscriptions up by that 10 percent to cover it.

“There’s the classic tale within the industry that you might have some really successful people who are members of your golf club – commercially very successful – but when they then get onto the golf club committee, in a lot of cases they don’t apply the same commercial logic to their golf club as they do to their business.

“And a golf club is a business at the end of the day. Some of them can be turning over anything from £500,000 up to £3 million or £4 million per year. That’s quite a substantial business.”