‘No women at Augusta’ policy defended 21
A retired UK golf club manager has become the first to publicly defend Augusta National’s refusal to allow women to join since the issue exploded earlier this year.
Proprietary golf clubs have been derided as ‘soulless’ in reaction to a call for VAT to be increased on membership subscriptions at private members’ clubs and reduced at profit-making ones.
The chairman of the Ulster branch of the Golfing Union of Ireland (GUI) has criticised two leading Northern Irish politicians for stating that sectarian prejudice is rife in the country’s golf clubs.
Recently, Brian Inglis, a former golf club secretary, found himself on the other side of the manager’s table when he decided to join a local club for the first time in his life.
Membership subscriptions are the lifeblood for most golf clubs, but the number of members at an average golf club has been dropping for several years.
One of the UK’s leading tax barristers has been employed to represent golf clubs in a tribunal hearing that could have major ramifications for golf in the UK.
Two newly emerging turf diseases have recently been confirmed in samples received from golf courses in the UK and Ireland and it is suspected that they are more prevalent in areas of fine turf than are currently recorded.
A 2011 England Golf grant led to more than 4,000 women and girls in England taking up golf last year. Nearly 550 of them are now members of golf clubs.
London Golf Club has announced plans to build the UK’s first European Tour ‘performance institute’.
This article, written by a computer consultant to golf clubs, was published in Golf Club Management in March 1996.
The body that runs amateur golf in England this year created an eBay account – ewgaewga – which has been selling unused ladies’ Daily Sports’ golf clothing ordered for 2011 European teams.
If Chipping Sodbury wins then private members’ clubs could recover some of the VAT paid on membership subscriptions between 1973 and 1990.
Another golf club manager has criticised England Golf’s ‘inactive handicap’ system, stating that confusion about it is preventing golfers from spending money at golf clubs.