The other night, I watched a programme on the idiot box called ‘Do We Really Need The Moon?’, which sounded a bit like a question that would crop up during a cost-cutting meeting in an office when the financial big wigs quietly ask ‘do we really need Wilma in human resources?’ Anyway, the moon thingymebob centred around some enthusiastic sciency woman who pottered around various global locations and asked other sciency folk about all things moon-related before deciding that, yes, we probably do need the moon after all at the conclusion of an exercise in pointless extravagance that was on a par with the Grand Old Duke of York’s aimless meander up and down a hill. It was all something of an anti-climax really. Rather like the brave new world of the amalgamated Scottish Golf.
After a prolonged, complicated palaver, which was a bit like trying to fashion a vessel of moon exploration out of an old Talbot Samba, the merger of the Scottish Golf Union (SGU) and the Scottish Ladies Golfing Association (SLGA) finally went through last year and the unified body came into existence on October 1 2015 with the kind of rousing fanfare that would have made the 20th Century Fox flourish sound like a sombre lament wheezed through a penny whistle. It was a momentous day for the game in this country. Golf in Scotland was boldly going where it hadn’t gone before … but then it swiftly went back to where it had been before anyway by appointing Hamish Grey, who had been chief executive of the old Scottish Golf Union, into a similar role with the new body. On Sunday, just three months after that announcement, it was unveiled at the joined-up body’s first agm that Grey was stepping down after it had been “agreed between the parties.”
Given all the discussions, debates, ups, downs, conflicts and compromises that were part of the long, and occasionally, rocky road towards amalgamation – a significant motion that Grey was always keen to push through - this latest development is hardly a shimmering endorsement of the new regime headed up by the chairperson, Eleanor Cannon. In these trying times for golf clubs across the country – and amid all the training trips for players and talent development, the health of its member clubs remains Scottish Golf’s chief focus – it is important that there is faith in good, strong leadership. A rummage around for a new chief executive after just 12 weeks doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. Of course, the initial appointment of Grey to the chief executive’s post back in December didn’t really rouse the senses. There was no great ceremony or any reason to hang out the bunting. And why would there be? It was a case of out with the old and in with the old. No disrespect at all to Grey but surely the start of the much-trumpeted merged body would have been the ideal time to ring the changes, instead of adopting a business as usual approach before agreeing a parting of ways a couple of months down the line? The fact that Grey had a membership at Royal Burgess, a male-only club in Edinburgh, was possibly not the kind of thing a newly forged mixed gender body promoting all-inclusiveness would have wanted to dwell on.
Having been at the helm of the now defunct SGU since 1998, Grey, who steered that organisation through turbulent waters after the ill-fated Scottish National Golf Centre at Drumoig racked up huge financial losses and was forced to close, was probably the longest serving high heid yin in Scottish sport and 17 years is a fair kick at the ba’… or, in this case, a batter at the dimpled ba’. As the good book says, “to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
Having assembled a new board, featuring a host of faces with a wealth of business experience and a passion for golf, there was an opportunity to bring in a fresh face to coincide with this fresh new vision. At a time when clubs are constantly being urged to innovate in order to survive and thrive, Scottish Golf went for the safe pair of hands in Grey. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but, under somewhat eye-brow raising circumstances, Cannon and her board members will now find themselves under more scrutiny than they would have hoped for after the first major decision taken by the powers that be has seemingly veered off out of bounds like a badly-judged drive.
It’s back to the tee for those involved in the running of Scottish Golf. The next shot in terms of the chief executive role has to find the target.
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