Reciprocal Arrangements between UK Golf Clubs

[Mark Chaplin]

County Cards were once a sort of once a year local reciprocal. Sussex had a county card years and years ago then Kent had a scheme, one round per annum, mid week usually for members guest rate, you had to be an individual member of the county union. Now you can play 100s of courses across the country so it's a discount card with no local loyalty and small groups can plan holidays around cheap play.

Brian - why would we want a full swap arrangement? The current system works well.

[Duncan Cheslett]

My place charges £30 a round reduced to £15 if you are the guest of a member. At weekends it's £37 and £18.50. These sums seem fairly typical for mid-level clubs up and down the country. We also accept all 2-4-1 type vouchers - but based on the day rate rather than a round.

I was chatting with our pro recently and asked him what proportion of visitors paid the full rack rate. 'Virtually none' was his reply.

I suspect that this phenomenon is now pretty well universal at all but the elite clubs. The real price of a round of golf is now £15-£20 regardless of what the rack rate is.  More importantly the perceived value of a round of golf is £15-£20.  Despite Adrian's protestations that this is a loss maker it is difficult to see how the genie can be put back into the bottle now.


The real problem for clubs is that these low green fees available to everyone make club membership less attractive for the occasional player. My buddies and I could visit a different course every week during the summer at a total cost of less than £400 each - half the price of the typical golf club membership.

Clubs in general have to find ways of making membership more attractive. Reciprocal arrangements are one possibility which I have floated here. I for one would be very interested in discussing others.

One that immediately springs to my mind goes back to green fees. What if the member's guest rate was available to all members of other official golf clubs, whether or not they were accompanied? 2-4-1 deals would no longer be accepted. If this policy was adopted universally club membership would gain perceived value, and nomadic golf become more expensive. Clubs generally would benefit as more occasional golfers saw that joining a club made financial sense.

Of course the market place would then decide the winners and losers. Good clubs with good courses would thrive. Mediocre clubs with mediocre courses would fail and close. This is exactly how it should be.

[Duncan Cheslett]

Or perhaps clubs just have to accept that £15-£20 is the going rate for a round of golf, and cut their cloth accordingly. Squeezing another 5000 rounds per year out of the course may be necessary, as well as more imaginative use of the clubhouse facilities.

Of course, none of these would please the membership...

[Tony_Muldoon]

One that immediately springs to my mind goes back to green fees. What if the member's guest rate was available to all members of other official golf clubs, whether or not they were accompanied? 2-4-1 deals would no longer be accepted. If this policy was adopted universally club membership would gain perceived value, and nomadic golf become more expensive. Clubs generally would benefit as more occasional golfers saw that joining a club made financial sense.

Of course the market place would then decide the winners and losers. Good clubs with good courses would thrive. Mediocre clubs with mediocre courses would fail and close. This is exactly how it should be.

Sorry Duncan, I like what you are suggesting but defining an 'official' golf club  that means something here is impossible. The predecessor to Crown golf had me as a member for £30 a year with 10% off greenfees on my ‘home’ course, an ‘official’ handicap with discounted rates on their other courses. You’d just be playing further into the hands of discount merchants.


It seems to me Adrian has a sound understanding of golf club financing. Sadly many clubs don’t and hence the mess will get worse.  The race to the bottom as another club has it.


Hainault Forrest GC was the first municipal golf course in the London area. When I started in 2000 you still had to get there before 5 am Saturday to get a game before 8, and Today’s Golfer proclaimed it the busiest facility in Europe (there are 36 holes).. They brought in computerised booking but  a no of alternative venues have  opened within 10 miles and you can walk on.  IN about 2008 it was part of a group that went bust. The lease has been taken on by a textile multimillionaire who has recently taken up golf.  His vision was to make the local John Deere agent happy by providing the capital to renew all machinery, and to cut greenstaff back to reduce running costs.  It will take him years to reverse the local word that greens are now cut just once a week and the place is going to hell. I’ve posted on here before how much I love the two courses but I can’t bring myself to go check out if it’s really become a train wreck even with the promise of a £9 twilight fee.


As with any industry today, predicting the future is extremely difficult. Safe to say undercutting the market unless you have some special way of reducing costs is a proven way to fail.  Most members clubs don’t have a mortgage on their property so additional income must look like free money but they are destroying their brand.

[Adrian_Stiff]

The basic THING that needs to happen is that cheap routes to play golf are not created. If you keep concessions limited to members of golf clubs, it is much better but its hard to administer (it could be done shortly by everyones CDH#). My opinion on the county cards is very minority a good 90% dont agree with me, I am comforted that the 10% do come from the better clubs.

Its too much to discuss on here but if you look at the costs to run a course now its escalated a lot recently. The only fees that gone up are membership fees and in raw terms with 2-4-1s en all the green fee price has gone down. This is fairly simple to understand why clubs lose members.

You can make membership and belonging and being in teams and competitions and making friends as great reasons but heres the problem £$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$

[Duncan Cheslett]

The basic THING that needs to happen is that cheap routes to play golf are not created.

From a clubs or a proprietor's point of view you are quite right; unfortunately most golfers would disagree vehemently even though the long-term viability of the game is in jeopardy.

A surprisingly large number of golf club members do not seem to understand that golf clubs need to be run as businesses.

[Adrian_Stiff]

They do need to run buisness like. The fact they can be happy with a zero profit situation is another matter, but I suspect what is happening at a lot of clubs is clubs are not storing away money for machinery replacement and provisions for irrigation systems.

You need to provide for future problems and save for those raiy days but it gets difficult to do in tough times.

Clearly what is good for the consumer is low price, but that happens in any rat race. If they club next door does 2-4-1s and county cards you have to compete, you cant charge lots more and you have to be value.

By the way I accept 2-4-1s on this basis Our Standard Green Fee is £40 Monday - Thursday and £48 Friday - Sunday. Our Day rate is £72. I accept 2-4-1s midweek at £36 per person. County card rate is also £36 (up to a £12 discount). We do very few rounds at £48, but I probably do 8,000 at £36. I think clubs should just up their anti on their green fee price (like half day rate) work out what their PPR needs to be and never deal inside that line.

[Duncan Cheslett]

I think your point is a good one, Adrian.

Work out the lowest price per round you can accept and then set your prices so that you can discount down to that figure. Visitors still regard it as good value because they are getting the discount, and a higher rack rate suggests that the course and club is of higher than average quality.

It's just basic business principles, really. Something that a lot of successful business people seem to forget as soon as they get involved in running a golf club...

[Mark Pearce]

Adrian,

I agree that it's difficult to see reciprocals working for local clubs where one is of a significantly higher standing than the others.  The arrangements that Crail has seem to avoid that problem, as do those the Northumberland has.  I suspect they don't get used that much, either!