The Covid-19 lockdown has been “catastrophic” for Stuart Syme’s golf business but he still supports the continuation of closure of golf courses and facilities until safe opening can be ensured.
The owner of the driving range at Drumoig Golf Centre in Fife, one of the most popular practice ranges and golf shops in The Courier area, Stuart – the father of European Tour pro Connor – also runs the pro shop at Scotscraig Golf Club in nearby Tayport.
In all the former captain of the PGA in Scotland has lost “tens of thousands of pounds” which would have turned over during the lockdown spell, which started just as the golf season was gearing up for the busy summer months, but he has some perspective on what’s happening.
“My wife Deborah works in the NHS and every day she’s coming home and telling us what it’s like out there, and it’s not pretty,” he said. “We have to do our best for everyone, golf is just a game and people’s health is of paramount importance.
“From the point of view of my customers and staff, I’d never put any of them in a position of danger, if that’s the right word.
“I do hear people clamouring to play golf, to go fishing, even the shooters which you forget is a big industry in Scotland, it’s a large number of people. Obviously we’re desperate to get back to playing, but we’ve got to be careful and try to bring our sports back when it is right – take our lead from the government health experts is the right way to go as far as I’m concerned.”
It has been a challenging seven weeks for the whole golf industry, he added.
“It’s been catastrophic for business, there’s no doubt about that,” continued Stuart. “We would have turned over tens of thousands in this time between the two shops, and we’re not getting that money, people aren’t coming to hit balls, you’ll never get those sales back.
“The government schemes, for furloughing and the self-employed scheme, have helped tremendously.
“Obviously we want to get up and running again. But the biggest thing for us all is we’d be terrified of a second lockdown. Now we know exactly what a lockdown feels like, we don’t want to come out of this and then have to go back again.
“When it started I was hoping for two weeks, now we’re at seven weeks and we’ve got to avoid a second phase. I want my businesses to open knowing as far as possible that there’s no way we can contribute to this happening again.”
The lockdown started at the worst possible moment for Stuart’s business, just as golfers returned for the spring and just as he was planning an extension to the range at Drumoig.
“The timing was bad for us because we were about to build two extensions to the range; we’ve got mammoth holes in the back, previously we’d have a perfect exit to go out the far end, and we’d have had a natural 360 degree pathway for customers to come in and out safely.
“But instead we’ve got two massive holes, so we have big challenges. I speak to my staff all the time about how we’re going to do this, we’ll maybe cut a hole in the wall or add a door to make in and out lanes flow better because clearly we’re going to have social distancing for a long time.
“The bays are big at Drumoig but maybe we’ll just be every second bay. We don’t know for how long we’ll have to do this, but if this goes into the winter time and we are still social-distancing, one of our biggest expenses in winter is the electricity for the floodlights, that may be something we have to look at if our turnover drops.”
Major golf suppliers have been understanding, while the industry has taken a collective approach, he added.
“The companies we deal with have been excellent. Major suppliers like Callaway and TaylorMade and Titleist/Footjoy have been very understanding that it’s quite difficult for people to pay their bills right now and put things on hold.
“The industry, the PGA, TGI and the industry suppliers have all realised this a whole-industry problem. We might see some stalling of new stock into 2021, which would help us.”
As for son Connor, it’s a question of sitting out and waiting.
“The European Tour has huge challenges, I see that new car sales have dropped 97%, and you think BMW is one of the tour’s biggest backers,” continued Stuart.
“Connor’s expecting some challenging things, but he’s ready to go and desperate to get back out there. He’s been doing a lot of Trackman work with Scotland Under-18 coach Spencer Henderson and he won that virtual event the Tour had last week.
“It’s an impossible situation and all sort of stories are coming out about running two tournaments at the same time when the tour starts; Connor is 61st on the Race to Dubai right now but he wouldn’t get into the bigger events if everyone eligible plays, and you’d expect they’ll all be entering everything.
“Hopefully they’ll say everyone who has a card holds it for 2021, that would only be fair.”
