Scottish golf club will donate 50% of its bookings to the NHS

By Alistair April 21, 2020 10:06 Updated

A Scottish golf club has stated that, in spite of the financial troubles the golf industry faces due to the coronavirus pandemic, it will donate a staggering 50 per cent of its online bookings for 2021 to the NHS to show its gratitude for its staff’s care throughout the crisis.

Golspie Golf Club, which is also ensuring its furloughed staff receive 100 per cent of their salaries, has told The Scotsman that it is already allowing online bookings for next year – far earlier than it normally would – to start the ball rolling on this extraordinary gesture and, by doing so, it could prove to be beneficial to both the NHS and the golf club itself. The offer will continue until early summer – but it might even be extended until the autumn.

The club’s treasurer said he was inspired by other golf clubs, particularly Duddingston, which have made offers to support the NHS during Covid-19 lockdown.

“When all this started, I picked up on Duddingston thinking about having an open competition later in the year to raise funds for the NHS,” said Alasdair MacDougall, Golspie’s treasurer. “I thought that was a great idea, but I also thought ‘what could we do that could happen a bit quicker and help us at the same time?’

“I came up with the idea of us opening up the bookings for 2021 earlier than normal, something we’d normally do in September or October. While we are doing pretty well as a club, we wouldn’t normally get a lot of online bookings for the following year, but I felt doing it earlier than usual was worthwhile.

“I also thought that giving part of that income to the NHS was a tweak on what is being done at some other clubs in terms of getting advance bookings as well for 2021.”

The offer at Golspie, where the course was designed by James Braid, is currently on bookings made before the end of June, though, depending on the uptake, that could be extended until the end of September.

Golspie Golf Club. Image from Facebook

“We had more in the bank than Brora,” he added MacDougall. “When all this started, it looked as though we will get through the summer with the cash we’ve got and, with a bit of luck, the course will have re-opened in July or August.

“Our urgency was probably less than Brora’s. But, having said that, we have virtually no money coming in at the moment, which, of course, is in common with just about every club at the moment. We are not any different to most clubs who are visitor-income orientated.

“We are in between Dornoch and Brora, which is a great selling point in itself. We have similar problems to Brora, just on slightly different scales. They have about £300k per year in terms of visitor income and we are £100k per year. They may potentially lose that £300k and we can potentially lose £100k.

“We’ve taken a similar approach as most other clubs in terms of furloughing. The only guy we’ve kept on is our head greenkeeper and we are also paying our guys 100 per cent as we feel we are good employers. We just need some income coming in and can pick it up again next year.

“As of this moment, we haven’t yet got our money [from the Scottish government] and I think it’s the same with the other clubs in the Highlands. But we expect to get that quite soon. What exactly that will be for us, I am not quite sure.

“We have a rateable value that is just under the threshold. But we have separate rateable values for the clubhouse and the course. If you put the two together, in theory we should get the £25,000, depending on how they treat it. That is very important to us as we have very little else coming in other than the monthly direct debits of the members.”