I wouldnt mind a trip to Germany again actually. The break from the doom merchants is more than welcome. It’s like every once in a while you need to remind yourself of what life can be like. Irish people are easily distracted. Content to send memes of Trumps reactions to his loss and extrapolating it to Kerry’s demise yesterday. Or some VAR decision in EPL or the new FIFA game.
I like Germany, everything works well, it’s clean and there’s loads to do. I was lucky it was sunny the few days (in Hamburg) and everything was open almost. It’s grand to be somewhere you don’t speak the language I think, the conversations around you and on TV/radio are white noise essentially, you can read and think in peace on trains or whatever without being distracted by hearing something. Had Matt Cooper on this evening driving, he had two ‘experts’ on basically screaming for a tight lockdown for Christmas. Enjoy the break!
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https://www.golfnet.ie/news/golfnet/4901/golf-clubs-in-northern-ireland-to-close
Seems a bit daft to be closing them now
Subs hike incoming for a lot of clubs
they can’t put up the subs in my opinion. Lads will just fuck off out of it. I think subs have peaked. They might do 18 month deals or ask for 2 years up front or something to get cash going around again
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Depends where you are I suppose. Places that were reliant on green fee income have higher running costs and have taken a bigger hit. They’re talking about a 7.5% increase here, we’ll see if there’s any commitment to reduce it in future at the AGM
Almost every golf club is reliant on green fees. I know for sure fota is as well.
The bigger clubs are going to have to take the hit on exclusivity for the time being. It’s 10 grand to shake hands in Fota, then 2k per year subs. If they put up the subs they may forget about it. The lads that scraped the 10k together recently will pay and the rich lads - but they won’t get new blood and they’ll lose a good few
Also, they can’t be talking about increases in subs when people have paid for 12 months this year and gotten at most 3/4 value more likely half. Missed out on golf in the prime time there in the Spring.
Are the golf clubs giving refunds of subs for the periods that they are closed?
Nowhere that I’ve heard of anyway
Not in my experience
I suppose most golf clubs run on a hand to mouth cash model and keep very little in the way of cash reserves for a rainy day. A sudden drop in members paying subs would sink most of them. I’d imagine a lot of lads would be very wary about paying a sub for 2021 if there was no prospect of getting out on the course until the summer at the earliest
it’s a tough business model.
They have very high maintenance costs - daily. They need turnover but the model is counter productive to that. Cash once a year from members and then a variable amount from green fees. Hard to plan out a year
Everyone happy with the new Handicap system? I can’t complain but I know of lads who got cut upwards of 3 shots and they’re seething.
What index rating did Cahir park get?
If your course gets a low index rating you’re fucked 
Surely if they sold green fees over the summer for a reasonable rate they would have raised a heap of cash… Devaluing the brand maybe… But the old head did it
Most clubs had a big spike in membership at the end of first lockdown with good offers for 6 month or 18 month membership
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V confusing… No change for me but no real clue how it will work in practise
there’s deals everywhere. When there’s deals everywhere it has no real impact on revenue, I’d imagine.
they’re cutting the fees to get people in - more people at less money or less people at more money - trade off.
I wouldn’t imagine lads that were still paying 100 quid odd to play the old head were dropping another hundo while they were there
your handicap will be based on 8 out of your last 20 scores - and will also be calculated based on the index rating of the course where you play also if you play off the whites you’ll be marked differently than the blues etc.
Basically, sharking is done
Your handicap will be different at every course
Here is a formula -
(Handicap Index) x Slope Rating/113 = Course Handicap.
I know some lads who can’t tell if they’ve taken 6 or 7 shots, this is gonna be some craic
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Cahir Park got an index rating of 71.9 off the blues the back 9 being rated a full 3 shots harder than the front 9 - I’d have thought the opposite @carryharry. A slope rating of 127.
Fota(Deerpark) got an index rating of rating of 73.9 off the blues - the front nine harder than the back which is in line with what I think
Fota(Barryscourt) is rated 75 off the blues - with the front 9 - 38 - they’re the hardest 9 of the 27