Royal Dornoch Winter Newsletter 2024

club and hopefully you will have the patience to
listen genuinely to an alternative view.
I believe a clear consensus exists among the entire
membership that we all want a new clubhouse and
we all want world class practice facilities and I
believe we all know if we built Struie it can address
our tee time shortage which is only getting worse
and hurting this town materially.
But I am opposed to this proposal as structured
because in my view it is financially irresponsible.
However, if we change the order of our projects
more strategically I think we can have all three
without any debt what so ever.
Let me explain. While I appreciate the Capital
Project subcommittee met 73 times David, I think
there are two critical skills that I feel are lacking
here. Professional financial expertise and strategic
planning expertise.
I don’t believe we have a Finance Convenor and I
am not sure if anyone involved has ever been
involved in financial aspects of a project of this
magnitude. And I do respect that some people
here might disagree but I believe a lack of
comprehensive strategic financial planning has
resulted in a long series of isolated uncoordinated
unfinished and often poor decisions.
To pay 1.2 million quid to build a Struie irrigation
system when we don’t know what we are doing
with the Struie.
I think we can have a better plan. First let me
explain why it is financially irresponsible.
The clubhouse will not generate a single pound of
incremental evidence. Not one golfer will come here
because of it. Our costs will rise materially
particularly with massive fixed-costs which we suffer
in the off season when it sits virtually empty and we
will lose a great deal of money permanently and our
plan is to make it up with increased fees to visitors
for whom we do not have any more tee times.
Further we can’t build it without borrowing
substantially at precisely in my view the wrong
time.
Interest in debt servicing fees in borrowing 5
million quid will cost more than £500,000 per
year. The interest rates in the UK are quite likely
to go up. In my personal opinion I think they will
go up substantially.
Secondly, this proposal won’t cost £14 million. I
bet it will cost £16 or £18 million. Why do I believe
that. I believe our management had demonstrated
little confidence in managing strategic projects.
Our biggest challenge in this club is the
membership tee times crisis and we have no
solution to that.
Our membership structure is broken and we have
many that waited 8 or 10 years on Struie. We have
many full members that have never been here for
years.
Our management sold 500 memberships largely to
Americans for something like one tenth of their
market price.
Our current F&B operations are currently poorly
run and are unprofitable losing money. They will
lose more, a lot more.
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