Twenty Million Spent Yearly on Golf in Britain

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 260, 24 January 1928, Page 7

Twenty Million Spent Yearly on Golf in Britain

Wages for Host of Men TRADE BENEFITS There are 500,000 golfers in Great Britain and Ireland, who spend among them more than £20,000,000 each year on the game. This estimate, made by an authority closely associated with the industrial side of golf, is based on an annual expenditure of from £3O to £SO by each player. Some golfers spend a great deal more than £SO in a year. These are the fortunate people who can afford tc make long journeys to fashionable courses, where they must have the latest in playing equipment, expensive meals, and the excitement of bets on their games. Artisan Players On the other hand, golf has many enthusiastic players—artisans and men and women of moderate means—who enjoy the benefit, particularly in Scotland, of cheap recreation on municipal courses close to their homes. The majority are members of clubs, but there is also a large class of public course players who remain unattached,, and, using modest outfits of “sticks” and golf balls which must do duty for many rounds, still derive their fair share of pleasure from the game. The number of golf clubs in Great Britain and Ireland may be estimated, in round figures, at 2,500, of which nearly 2,000 have private courses. The average membership is 200, with the record probably held at 1,100 by the Moor Park Club, Rickmansworth, which has two 18-hole courses, and, as clubhouse, a palatial mansion. What is vaguely called the London district possesses 250 clubs, the annual subscription running on an average from seven guineas to twelve guineas; but Glasgow, with 2:55 clubs, has more and probably cheaper golf. 6s a Quarter

Most of the London clubs have their own courses, in contrast to Edinburgh, where, in addition to numerous private courses, there are others shared by several playing bodies, and also several splendid public links, which serve as the playgrounds for nearly 200 clubs. What becomes of the money spent by golfers? It helps to maintain an army of workers. Golf finance lias grown from pence to millions of pounds since the Edinburgh Burgess Society, the oldest golf club with a continuous history, passed in the year 1774 a resolution to engage a boy as messenger, caddie, and waiter. He was to be provided with a suit of clothes, which the ancient minute book tells us was “to be wore by him on the Saturdays and Sundays only,” and

was to be paid 6s a quarter. Modern golf, by contrast, provides an adequate living for workers of many grades—course constructors, clubhouse architects, builders, secretaries clerks. professionals, greenkeeperef stewards, waiters, cooks, maids, course rangers, caddies, and the thousands of people engaged in the manufacture of golf balls and clubs. Golf benefits directly and indirectly many other trades, notably those of the tailor, the shoemaker, and the hatter. The motor industry, too, must have cause to bless the game of golf. On one day during the recent mixed foursomes tournament at Worplesdon 230 motor-cars, which had brought players and spectators, were parked near the clubhouse. It was estimated that the motor park close to St. Andrews links contained 1,000 motor-cars on the day of Bobby Jones’s victory in the open championship. It is impossible to calculate the nuriiber of people who are dependent on golf for their living; but, to take one section —the professionals—there are 1,200 members of the Professional Golfers’ Association, and many others who have yet to join that admirable society. The professional attached to a small club makes only a modest income, but “four figures” are well within the compass of the more famous and fortunate players. The leading tournaments give some indication of the “ v **~ money” which is in professional golf. Commercial enterprise provides the prize money for thepfour tournaments run annually under the supervision of the Professional Golfers’ Association —£1,200 for. the competition decided this year at Wentworth. £1,040 at Walton Heath, £I,OOO at Blackpool, and £IOO for the assistants' championship at Oxhey. Thexe are, in addition, 1,000 guineas tournaments each year at Gleneagles and Leeds, with £275 as the prizes in the open championship. These seven events represent more than £5,800 in prize money. Numerous local championships and competitions are also held in the course of a year, so that, one way and another, the good player has excellent chances to supplement the income which he makes from salary, teaching, and sale and repair of clubs. Additional plums fall to the share of some of the most famous professionals, among them journalistic work and posing for instruction films. The money in golf course values is as impossible to calculate as the total sum which pays the members of the golf industry. Millions of acres, worth much or little for other purposes, are “under golf*V in Great Britain and Ireland. It is significaf!? that the members of Tooting. Bee, a South London club, subscribed £30,000 last year to secure their course from the danger of being built over, and that more recently another course near London was bought for £21,000 by a club in fear of similar eviction. Golf courses are valuable assets, but expensive to maintain. The secretary of one inland club, when asked for an estimate, quoted £1,750 as annual wages for greenkeeper and staff, with renewals, plant, seeds, and so forth, possibly I.Q be reckoned in addition. He mentioned as an item £l5O, exclusive of labour and water, as the cost of treating the course with wormkiller.. But, judging by the tidy appearance of the fairways which he proudly pointed out on a damp October day, that was some of the bestspent money out of the vast sums which are sunk in golf.