WHETHER you’re a member, a club secretary, a PGA pro, a committee representative, a volunteer or a nomadic golfer, today’s Future of Golf in Scotland conference in Edinburgh could be as lively as a vigorously shoogled bottle of Prosecco.
More than 500 folk with a passion for the game will descend on Auld Reekie for a series of discussions and possibly some finger-wagging during an open forum aimed at addressing the key issues and challenges facing golf.
The top brass of Scottish Golf have already had a proposal for a new strategy shouted down amid contentious developments which ended with the chief executive, Blane Dodds, departing.
A variety of plans, including the doubling of the annual affiliation fee and a mandatory centralised tee-time booking scheme, have gone down like a sack of spanners in many quarters while some of the more fustier pockets of resistance have used the upheaval to display antiquated thinking that is a sizeable plook on Scottish golf’s complexion.
While many clubs around the land are thriving, hundreds of others are barely surviving. Just the other day, the Irish government handed the country’s clubs and golfing facilities a handy £1.7m funding injection. Here in the home of golf, government funding continues to be chopped.
Meanwhile, lamentable female membership figures threaten to turn a national sport into an exclusive pursuit for men over 50.
In the wake of widespread hostility, the board have taken a step back and said to stakeholders: “Right, you don’t like our ideas, have you got anything better up your sleeve?” Today’s conference is a chance to get those ideas across.
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