Rawhiti Golf Club Plans To Move Out

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31023, 31 March 1966, Page 20

Rawhiti Golf Club Plans To Move Out

The Rawhiti Golf Club is looking for 100 acres of undulating country for a new golf course to the north-east of the city. The club’s present quarters are the municipal links at New Brighton, which are open to the public. The number of casual golfers has grown so much recently that the club members feel they are being squeezed off the course. Mr A. BrookeTaylor, the club’s president, blames the television programme “Challenge Golf” for the growing interest in the game in Christchurch. But he hopes the next series of the programme can be turned to the club’s advantage. If it generates even more interest in golf the dub will be able to attract the extra members it needs to finance a new course. Seeking Land

“We are looking at land up towards the Waimakariri river,” said Mr Brooke-Taylor. “You can’t get anything within range of Christchurch

under about £5OO an acre, and we want something for about £12,000. But we’ve found that the motorway proposal has pushed up land values out there.”

He said the course would be about 10 or 12 miles out of the city, which would not be too far for club members to go.

“The public course is overrun by casual players now,” he said. “Since they started that TV series people have been taking up golf left, right and centre. They use borrowed clubs and just pay the green fees, and half of them couldn’t hit themselves out of a paper bag.” Member* Lost

Mr Brooke-Taylor said the elub had lost “three or four dozen” members because of the invasion of casual golfers. The clubs in the city were all full and had long waiting lists, but when the new course was opened at the former New Brighton trotting course some of the problems might be solved.

The Rawhiti club bad 200 members, but it would need at least 300 to be self-supporting. Members would probably be able to raise some of the money themselves, and a holding company would be formed to buy the land. Mr Brooke-Taylor said the Rawhiti course was really too short for good golfers and the club had to think of its younger members. "I for one will be sorry, to up sticks and move,” he confessed, “but we’ve got to be guided by the majority.”