Our Shrinking Golf Courses !

Golf is a sport with a world wide following and its star players earn millions and draw wide audiences.  The average Australian golfer plays for both exercise and pleasure and both genders are well catered for with spacious golf courses scattered across city suburbs and in country towns.  It seems pressure is building to halve their size to create land for other forms of " passive recreation ".

Under the spotlight is the twenty-one hectare Marrickville Golf Club in that inner west working class suburb.  This was established  in the 1940's when people lived in homes on a quarter acre block and land prices were a mere fraction of the cost that applies today.

There is a proposal to halve this eighteen hole course and reduce it to just nine holes of play.  It is claimed this is necessary because of the " health crisis " and the land saved could be put to better use to rekindle the human spirit, open green space and create more affordable leisure activities.

That ignores the fact that golf is a game traditionally played over eighteen holes and most golfers will walk away from a mere nine hole course.  The club will lose out on  green fees and the general revenue loss will make the course upkeep uneconomic.  This club is one of the most publicly accessible in Sydney and this proposal is aimed at replacing a legitimate game with biodiversity, water management and general recreation needs.

A similar proposal is pending in regard to Moore Park golf course in the inner city.  Lord Mayor Clover Moore wants to reduce this in size to reclaim land to create more parkland for public use and reduce pressure on parks and paths.   It is possible that this will include a network of shared pedestrian and cycling tracks.

Golf is fast shrinking into a sport reserved for the wealthy. There is a long queue awaiting entry to many exclusive clubs and fees are high.  The clubs where the public can pay green fees and enjoy a game of golf seem to be the ones under pressure for size reductions and it is noted that Marrickville has just 705 members in a suburb with 200,000 residents.  To many of those residents, the sprawling grounds of the golf club seem more like a public park contributing to the lungs of the city by the quantity of trees planted there.

When making recreational use of land reclaimed from golf clubs comes to mind many people will be reminded of that old witticism that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.   Most likely it will be a committee that will design this new use for that land and in all probability it will contain less trees as they strive to add more activities.

To some degree, this attack on golf clubs generally is motivated by jealousy.  Most other sport is played at higher intensity and one of the attractions of golf is that it combines a leisurely stroll with periodic requirements of concentration and skill.  For some unknown reason that seems to instill fury in many non-golfers.

The wisdom of those that created our golf courses when land was cheap and plentiful is to be admired. They are better left alone to remain an oasis of tranquility that brings peace to our frenetic suburbs.