4 Jun 2013

UPDATE - June 14, 2013. The following message was today posted on the Ipswich Golf Club website. Very sad news indeed.

Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond the clubs control, Ipswich Golf club is now closed for business both golfing and social activities. We thank everyone for their patronage over the past 116 years.


June 4, 2012 - Media reports have emerged in Queensland, that the Ipswich Golf Club has collapsed into administration and is now on the market for sale. The member owned club, founded way back in 1897, first appointed an administrator in April but has been unable to trade its way out of financial stress. The club’s freehold golf course land, its clubhouse, gaming machines, green keeping equipment and golfing membership were advertised for sale this week in the Australian Financial Review.

The fall from grace for this once storied golf club has been swift and dramatic. Only six years ago the club’s annual turnover was $20 million, now there are only 400 members remaining and some of those golfers pay less than $200 per year in membership subs. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

Back in 2008 members approved a plan to sell much of its existing golf site for a residential development and rebuild a new 18-hole golf course partly across an adjoining property. That property came complete with nice, natural ground movement, established old gum trees, small dams and a deep ravine. Though a little tight in places, the virgin terrain was significantly more appealing than the land that had been sold.

While we are not familiar with the design process undertaken by the board at the time, 1990 US PGA Champion Wayne Grady was commissioned to redesign the club’s golf course. His fledgling business had designed precisely zero golf courses in Australia to that point. Ipswich Golf Club would be Grades’ guinea pig.

A quick look at the Wayne Grady Golf Design website reveals some choice words on the design philosophy of the company, which is to ‘use creativity and imagination as key ingredients to create designs that respect the existing character of the site and produce an end product that emphasises the natural features and exceeds the client’s expectations. By working with the site and not fighting it, not only do we arrive at the most harmonious result but also the most cost efficient.’

Signature design companies the world over resort to the use of fluffy, empty prose to sell their design credentials. Everybody knows that minimalism sells, and ‘emphasising natural features’ and ‘not fighting the site’ are catch phrases that signature design teams hope will either add credibility or disguise the fact that a professional golfer, rather than a proficient architect, will be designing your golf holes. It worked in this case, as the Ipswich Golf Club put its faith, and future, in Grady and his inexperienced team to deliver a golf course that members and guests would enjoy.

That golf course was recently charging $22 for 18 holes, and the club itself has been losing members at an alarming rate since the grand opening of the Wayne Grady course in 2010. It’s true that golf membership is in decline across Australia, but equally this was a carelessly designed golf course that Planet Golf identified prior to opening was at risk of losing members because they were likely ‘to tire quickly’ of the layout.

Not only were so many holes and so many elements here poorly designed, they were badly constructed and scant consideration appears to have been given to the club’s maintenance budgets. We spoke to the club’s superintendent in 2010 who confirmed that to maintain the course properly he would need to almost double his groundstaff, something the club could not afford to do. It would be a stretch, even for Grady, to suggest that his team produced a course that exceeded his client’s expectations.

While the demise of the Ipswich Golf Club is a disaster for golf in southeast Queensland, it should provide a valuable lesson to other clubs on the pitfalls of using famous professional golfers to ‘design’ their golf course. It should also act as a warning to clubs about getting into bed with developers without taking appropriate advice to safeguard their futures.

We sincerely hope that club administrators are able to find a way through this current malaise, and somehow resurrect the Ipswich Golf Club and get members back onto their home patch. It won’t be easy, but 116-year old clubs deserve better.

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one of Wayne Gradys new holes at Ipswich Golf Club

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