By any measure – and despite some considerable grumbling when they were first mooted – independent golfer schemes have been a smash hit.
They give players the chance to hold an official handicap for a yearly fee without having to be a member of a club.
The industry feared the cut price option would see a wave of players ditch membership to enjoy cheaper, ad-hoc arrangements, but the enormous influx of players who returned to the game after the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and the following year quickly soothed any worries.
And they’ve gone from strength-to-strength ever since. In England, there were 72,800 iGolf subscribers – up by a third – in 2025, with 9,600 moving into club membership. Since the scheme was launched in 2021, more than 24,000 previous subscribers have made that jump.
In Scotland, there are 5,500 members of OpenPlay – Scottish Golf’s independent golfer scheme – and they contributed to equally impressive participation figures, with general play scores up 37% and competition scores in the country totalling more than 1.4 million.
But on an episode of The NCG Golf Podcast, Tom Irwin and I debated whether the landscape was about to change.
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There are two views of the club game in Great Britain & Ireland right now and where you sit probably depends entirely on your experience. One picture sees those record scores being submitted, participation remaining extremely high and golf clubs with lengthy waiting lists.
But the other sees a membership that’s only getting older, a cost-of-living crisis that is starting to really hit those on middle incomes, and golf clubs who are are struggling to employ staff and finding it tougher to generate revenue.
Will golfers continue to be loyal as the squeeze gets ever tighter? And if not, could we see iGolf get even stronger as players look to keep their handicaps without necessarily having to remain tied to a club?
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Is club membership at risk from independent golfer schemes?
“Independent golfer schemes didn’t just appear randomly,” said Tom on the podcast. “They came about to fill a gap that clubs weren’t meeting. People are time-poor and cash-poor, but they still want to play the game and they still like the association that membership brings.
“What iGolf does is lower the barrier to entry and soften the landing. Instead of facing a cliff edge – either pay a grand and join a club or stay completely outside the system – you’ve now got a softer step.
“And at the other end of the spectrum, it keeps people in the game. For working parents in particular, Saturday and Sunday golf is the first thing that gets squeezed out.
“Traditionally, that meant resigning your membership, putting the clubs in the garage and effectively disappearing from the sport for a decade. iGolf offers a way of staying connected, keeping a handicap, staying visible to the game, rather than becoming a lost golfer altogether. The real question is: is it better to have a nomadic golfer than no golfer at all?”
I certainly think we’re getting to a point where relentless cost-of-living increases over the last few years – whether that’s food, energy costs, entertainment, or taxes – is really beginning to bite. I’m feeling it myself and I’ve been the kind of golfer that membership has relied on a quarter of a century.
You do start to look at your outgoings and think, ‘how has that gone up so much?’ And you also start to look for things to trim. Golf club membership is expensive and it’s also going up because club costs are going up.
So if there is going to be a year when we finally see a break in the post-pandemic boom, it’s likely to be this one.
If membership reductions happen alongside continued growth in iGolf and other similar schemes, then you might start to ask whether the availability of cheaper, more flexible alternatives was beginning to mark a move away from a traditional model.
But this will not be an exodus. Membership is important for so many of us and it will be a drip rather than a pour for now. Will it become a more difficult decision in the future if pressures don’t ease?
“A traditionalist would argue that this is how it should be, because that is what retains people in the model and what works for golf clubs,” added Irwin.
“It’s all very well saying habits have changed, but habits only change if you give people an alternative. If there is no alternative, then people have to make a hard choice: do you want to be a golf club member or not?
“And if you take that opportunity away and say, ‘You have to support us for us to exist’, would that not protect the long-term future of golf clubs better than giving people this option of fluidity, which makes it very hard for facilities to sustain themselves?”
On the other hand, if independent golfer schemes didn’t exist, would golf club membership necessarily reap the benefits? I’m not sure it would.
We’d probably see what we did before, and continue to now within the iGolf framework – nomadic golfers playing pay-and-play, society golf and informal rounds.
Independent golfer schemes have formalised that and brought those people into the system. They have not necessarily created them.
So perhaps they need not be seen as a threat, rather as meeting a different need. They continue to be a way of bringing more people into golf and probably helps sell more golf club memberships right now.
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But it will be interesting to note what happens over the next 12 to 18 months and through this current retention cycle. Are the doom-mongers right to be concerned, or will golf club membership ride out an oncoming storm?
Now have your say on independent golfer schemes
What do you think? Could independent golfer schemes become a threat to club membership, or are they are a vital part of the golfing landscape? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or drop us a line on X.
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