A great time to tee off

Golf club fees and equipment have never been so cheap, so enjoy the recession, says EMMET MALONE, in our series on taking up a new activity

THERE MAY be a general acceptance out there that the phenomenon of “zombie” hotels is not a good thing, but there is also a contrary view, firmly held by the shifting minority of people who are hoping to bag a bargain basement weekend away. Well, it turns out there’s something rather similar going on in the world of golf.

During the good times, money flowed freely through the sport, and an astonishing number of courses of virtually all standards sprang up to cash in on the boom. A few short years on, one club that is said to have charged a €25,000 entrance fee will now let you in for a measly few hundred.

Many new courses are fighting for survival. Even the prestige courses have been feeling the squeeze in the green-fees market, if the prices being offered are anything to go by.

The upshot is that whether you want to simply dip your toe in the water with the odd round, commit yourself to a full membership or anything in between, there has never been a better time to take up golf in Ireland.

“There’s a whole new landscape in golf in this country,” says Joe O’Connor of the Leopardstown Golf Centre (golf.leopardstown.com), a sort of one-stop shop where you can play, get lessons, buy or borrow the necessary equipment, play 18 holes or use the driving range at affordable rates.

“I’d say a lot of golf courses have major problems these days, and it’s because of the ridiculous amount of money that people were getting away with charging in green fees,” he says. “We lost the run of ourselves, charging people €60, €70 and €80 to play a round of golf. But the chickens are coming home to roost now. There are still queues to get into some well established clubs, because they have retained a lot of prestige, but some of the newer clubs are certainly going to have very serious problems.”

In fact, as with those zombie hotels, the costs can seem a little ridiculous, with packages for golf and bed and breakfast starting, in some cases, at as little as € 65. The GUI website includes a long list of special offers, with a round on a decent if unspectacular course combined with dinner routinely coming in at €35. Lose the steak and chips and you can be looking at €20 or less for a day out in the open. The cost of memberships – if you can be bothered, given the ease with which you can pick and choose courses – is also plummeting.

“My advice would be to get into one of the societies,” says O’Connor, whose own course hosts quite a few on a regular basis. “If you’re just starting out, get a lesson or two, just enough to equip you with a swing and then get out there and start to learn the game on the course.”

If the financial commitment required by golf has come down dramatically over the past year or so, the time commitment has not, with a round, particularly on a distant course, involving a long day out.

Pitch and putt, on the other hand, is both affordable and quick, key selling points, says the sport’s coaching and development administrator, Pauric Buggy.

“In terms of equipment, you’re only looking at a couple of clubs, a couple of balls, a few tees and you’re off, while membership of a club averages something like €100.

“As for time,” he says, “you can play a round in an hour compared with maybe four or even five times that for a round of golf. In competitions people regularly play a couple of rounds in an evening.”

At the top level, pitch and putt is highly competitive but, particularly for the beginner, it may well represent a less daunting starting point than a three-mile-long golf course.

WHAT THEY SAY:"I think if you talked to people in those clubs they would acknowledge that times are tough and we're doing a lot of work in the area of trying to help them when it comes to attracting and retaining members. But the reality is that the cost of playing golf has come down very dramatically," says Shay Smith, the general secretary of the Golfing Union of Ireland.

WHAT IT DOES:"I think the obvious starting point with golf is that Mark Twain line about it being a good walk spoiled," says DCU physiologist and expert in the field of exercise, Dr Giles Warrington.

“Well, it may be spoiled but there’s certainly a very good walk at the heart of it, and if you’re not already pretty fit when you take it up then if you can play a couple of times a week or even once, but then do some other work to help you along – shorter walks, a bit of running or visits to the gym – then you’re going to start feeling the impact fairly quickly.

“The walking will provide a very good cardiovascular workout, but there are other benefits, too, in terms of flexibility, which will improve as you acquire a better swing. Much of the same benefits come with playing pitch and putt, although obviously the much shorter length of time of that round will be an important factor, because the amount of benefit is directly linked to the time you spend out there exercising.

“Still, if you’re playing two or more rounds of pitch and putt in a day then clearly it’s a good thing, and you’re talking about a very similar sort of workout.”

WHAT IT TAKES:Primarily a set of clubs, although courses aimed at the "pay and play" market will rent or even lend them to you. Like everything else, though, buying your own need not involve the commitment it once did, with prices for an entry-level set at McGuirks, for instance, starting at €175 including a bag, while Elverys has recently been advertising a set of Wilson clubs reduced from €350 to €199. Pitch and putt clocks in at a fraction of that due to the fact that you need only two clubs – a putter and a wedge – and most clubs will loan you some as you get started.

WHERE IT'S AT:The GUI's site, gui.ie, provides lists of current offers from clubs, while dublin golf.com and irishgolf.net carry lists of clubs from all over the country, links to their websites and details of fees charged. Prices start at €10 for public courses up to perhaps €200 for the very best championship ones, but most of them now offer many ways of avoiding paying the standard rate by taking early or late time slots or via the likes of four-for-three offers.

For the price of a single round at one of the country’s leading golf courses, a whole family could join some pitch and putt clubs. About 120 are listed at ppui.ie, and many have their own websites with details of prices for visitors. Many more are not affiliated to the union.