Paul Lawrie: Golf club memberships aren’t expensive – but you need to play

Use your membership and playing golf will become less expensive. That is the advice of former Open champion Paul Lawrie.

The Scotsman runs his own golf centre in Aberdeen which charges £330 per year for an adult to use the golf course, the driving range, the short game area and other amenities.

But if someone purchases a membership at the Paul Lawrie Golf Centre and rarely uses it, they could be paying over £300 to visit a putting green.

Lawrie, who took over the facility in 2012, believes the value of golf club memberships rests on how often you play golf and explains how the game can become “unbelievably expensive” for its most inactive players.

“Some people are paying between £500 and £1000 for membership and playing three times a week. My god, they’re paying a fiver for a game of golf!” Lawrie told the NCG Golf Podcast.

“I’m not having a go at them, but it’s them that moan about paying for golf. If you’re paying £1000 for a membership, and you’re playing once a year, that’s unbelievably expensive. But not if you’re playing.

“If you’re an active golfer and you’re playing once or twice a week, golf memberships over the year aren’t overly expensive at all.”

In January 2023, it was reported that golf clubs in general lost members in 2022 but membership fees continued to increase. The number of golf clubs with membership costs of more than £1600 had gone up by over a third.

In the annual Members and Proprietary Golf Clubs Survey that took figures from 82 private members and proprietary clubs, it was also found nearly a quarter of clubs reported more members leaving than joining.

Then in the following March, figures from BRS Golf showed that 5.6 million member rounds were played in the first quarter of 2023 and the 1500 clubs that were surveyed reported losing around 6,000 members in that period.

Last month, a Golfshake survey of over 1600 players found that golf club fees have significantly increased over the last five years, and over half of them pay more than £1000 for their yearly fees.

This survey sparked a wide debate among club golfers about what figure is too much to pay for a golf club membership.

Across 52 weeks, paying £1000 comes to roughly £20 a round if you walk the fairways once a week.

“We are £330 here to be a member of our golf course. You can use the course, you can use the short game area, you can use the putting green as often as you want,” Lawrie added.

“We’ve got people who play three or four times a week here, and they pay £330 a year. It’s a par 3 course and I’m not sure you could charge much more than that, but they get great value for what they’re paying and I think that’s what it’s about.

“The bigger courses are charging what they’re charging. As long as you’re playing them regularly, I don’t see them being that expensive, but you’ve got to play. If you don’t play much, then it’s very expensive, but it’s not if you play a lot.”

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