Rich pickings for Troon

Press, 26 July 1989, Page 28

Rich pickings for Troon

By

BOB SCHUMACHER

Advice preferred to New Zealand tourists visiting Britain is to take advantage of the reasonably priced bed-and-breakfast establishments for overnight accommodation.

However, one place to avoid this month would have been Troon, in Scotland, the venue for the recently finished British Open golf championship. There were more than 200 such establishments in the vicinity of Troon where guests could pay up to $l6O for a bed and breakfast in the morning.

Home owners in the area of the Royal Troon links were also quick to cash in on the popularity of the British Open, one of the world’s “big four” tournaments, according to a Christchurch couple, Charles and Joan Tapper, who were touring Scotland at the time of the tournament and who

cherished hopes of being among the spectators. Golf lovers from around •the world were prepared to pay exorbitant prices for houses let by local residents.

The Tappers had given up hope of seeing the open until the Marr Rugby Club let sites on its nearby ground for camper vans. Those campers — and the Tappers were among them — had access to the club’s facilities, including the bar. The championship official letting agents said that 300 owners had let their homes through them. Houses of five and six bedrooms were netting up to $9OOO while smaller flats were leased from between $2OOO to $3OOO. Nearer the course, large houses were being let for $lB,OOO. One young couple who leased their three-bed-room apartment on an

estate to an American doctor for $3OOO for the week intended to holiday in France in that period. Among those wanting houses for the open were Seve Ballesteros and Lee Trevino. “It allows them to have somewhere to relax at the end of the day — in any case most of the hotels had been booked years ago,” an agent said. The owners of the magnificent house overlooking the seventeenth green would not disclose the fee paid for its use by British Aerospace. Suggestions that the amount was about $120,000 for the six-bed-room mansion were dismissed by a spokesman. Whatever the figure, British Aerospace, which has its successful Jetstream aircraft base at nearby Prestwick, considered it a good investment. The marquee on the lawn outside offered a view better than a prime

spot in the golf grandstand and British Aerospace had the ideal backdrop to impress existing and potential clients.

Some spectators were prepared to pay inflated prices for a bed on wheels. At Prestwick’s St Andrew’s Caravan Park, which borders the Prestwick and Royal Troon clubs, touring vans could be rented for $l5OO a week. Normally one could be hired at about $350 a week.

Big money was handed over inside the course as well as outside. About 80 companies paid $60,000 for a site in the tented village within the course’s confines.

So it was not only the leading professinals who prospered at Royal Troon. But then, as the old saying goes, “a racket is no good unless one is in it!”