From todays Sunday Herald :
A fairer way to play
Ken Symon meets the course designer who aims to open up the world of golf to wider participation by tackling elitism
If Neil Hobday’s vision comes to pass not only will he build an interesting business but it will help transform the standing of golf in Scotland.
Hobday Golf aims to develop or redevelop quality golf courses with top-level facilities but with an accessibility far removed from the snobbish attitude exhibited by many traditional golf clubs.
The company has just signed a seven-figure deal to redevelop the Spey Bay golf course on the Moray Firth, which will aim to provide new quality facilities to match the striking beauty of the views from the links course. It is an area from which you can spot ospreys, seals and even dolphins.
The redevelopment plan will mean changing the layout of the 18- hole links course originally designed by Ben Sawyer.
Hobday says: “In fact, we will be returning it closer to the way Ben Sawyer did it first time around.”
Other plans for the development include building a new club house and providing “pine valley style” accommodation.
Hobday believes there is a market for accommodation for golfing fours. So a group of four men or women can retire to a lodge together to chat, watch TV or golf videos before retiring to their own rooms.
“We believe that that is what people who have perhaps travelled a long way to play together want,” Hobday says. “Rather than retiring to their own room they want a place they can go back to after they’ve eaten and watch TV or play cards and have a cigar.”
The plan is for 10 four-person lodges at the Moray Firth course.
One key feature of the planned Hobday golf developments is that they will all include a small area of upmarket houses. The emphasis, Hobday stresses, will be very much on low-density houses with only 15 or 20 proposed for the Spey Bay development. Hobday is in talks with a number of house developers about this aspect of the plans. The sale of the houses is crucial to the economics of the style of and quality of facilities envisaged by Hobday.
The clubhouse will epitomise the Hobday vision of golf, and will include a bar and a dining room for “fine dining”, yet which will still be “accessible”. He stresses: “We want to create a more welcoming and relaxed atmosphere for people to come to when they arrive at a golf course.
“We want people to be welcomed with a, ‘Hello can I help you?’ rather than arriving at a clubhouse where nobody talks to you and where, frankly, unless you know people you’re not made to feel welcome.”
Providing top-class facilities, a respect for the traditions of golf and designs that create “unique” rather than a “commodity” golfing product is an approach which Hobday believes will prove a winner.
This attitude clearly has some strong backing. Hobday says he received backing for his venture from two North American investors with just two phone calls.
One of those backers is Charles Chuck Nelson from California who has a decade’s experience in the entertainment and sports industries. The other backer, from the east coast, prefers to remain anonymous, Hobday says.
The other development for Hobday Golf is the recruitment of two new non-executive directors, Doug Smith, the chairman of Hearts, and Jim Faulds, a major figure in Scottish advertising as the founder of Faulds Advertising.
The directors and backers were clearly attracted both by Hobday’s vision and his long pedigree in the sports management business.
He worked for Mark McCormack’s International Management Group where he managed a stable of professional golfers including Colin Montgomerie, Sam Torrance and Laura Davis. In 1991 he moved to Edinburgh as a founding director of David Murray’s Carnegie Sports International where he worked on a joint venture with Loch Lomond Golf Club to create the major tournament there.
From 1999 Hobday did consultancy work including work on the Kingsbarns Golf Links near St Andrews.
Together this experience has helped Hobday create a vision of a new type of golf development which has now got off the tee.
07 March