Popular course enjoys a quiet 75th celebration

Nov 20 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

GOLF CLUBS celebrating a special anniversary are likely to hold commemorative events, maybe a celebratory dinner or perhaps even raise a new flag up the pole outside the clubhouse.

But the 75th anniversary of the opening of Arrowe Park, the course and the golf club, has been a quiet occasion. The club held a special golf competition and there was a cabaret evening, but otherwise the occasion has passed off without any razzmatazz.

Yet Arrowe Park has a special place in the affection of hundreds, and indeed probably thousands, of golfers. Like other municipals, it is where many golfers topped and sliced their first attempts at hitting the little golf ball, perhaps even left such divots they look like the results of a mini-excavator and where finally they managed to hit the ball at least reasonably well.

It is where they mastered the intricacies of the rules, discovered the etiquette of the game, like repairing pitch marks, raking bunkers and standing as still as statues on gravel paths when a player was on the tee.

Some graduated from the municipals to make their mark on the game.

Paul Waring from Bromborough played his first golf at the Brackenwood municipal before going on to represent England, become the England amateur and is now a member of the professional ranks. Mark Roe, who played on the European Tour and is now a commentator, was an assistant professional at Arrowe Park.

Across the years when golf has seemed expensive it has provided an affordable way to play. Michael Wishart, captain of Arrowe Park and a member since 1979, pays £251 a year.

His contract is the senior citizens rate. The full adult rate is £478 and that for juniors is £125. The contracts are for seven days and allow golfers to play not only at Arrowe Park but at any of the Wirral municipals, the other 18-hole courses, Brackenwood, and Hoylake, and also the nine-hole Warren. The costs per rounds are £11 30 for adults, £6.70 for seniors and juniors £6 70.

The Arrowe Park as it is today can be traced back to about 1800 when the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, John Shaw, who had made his fortune supplying his ships for the slave trade, bought the land.

He passed the land to his great nephew John Ralph Shaw, who landscaped the area and who, in 1835, built Arrowe Hall, still at the centre of the park and now a residential care home.

The land passed into the estate of Lord Leverhulme in 1927 and he gave it to the then Birkenhead Corporation that turned it into a public park in 1928.

The following year it was the setting for the first international Boy Scouts Jamboree, which was attended by Lord Baden Powell. In 1947 it was a qualifying course for the Open held at Royal Liverpool and Percy Allis and Henry Cotton are among the names in the visitors’ book. The Open winner that year was Fred Daly.

In addition to Arrow Park other clubs play there, the Wellington, the Basset Hound Golf Society, the Bowmans Golf Society, Leasowe Manor, Poulton Victoria and the Rose and Shamrock.

But these are not the best times for Arrowe Park. One reason, as far as the golfers are concerned, is the rumour that the course and indeed Brackenwood and Hoylake municipal too, or at least parts of the land, will be sold for housing development.

The gossip is strongly denied by Wirral Council. Councillor Bob Moon, Cabinet Member for Culture, Tourism and Leisure, says: “Arrowe Park golf course is a very popular and well-used facility, situated at the heart of a large public park on green belt land. I can give people a categorical assurance that there are no plans for the disposal of any of our municipal golf courses or public park land for housing or any other development.”

But the rumours are apparently strong and growing, possibly encouraged by the fact that the numbers playing at Arrowe Park have dropped dramatically.

The problem for Arrowe Park, like other municipals, is the new and now growing challenge presented by the changed situation at the private clubs.

At one time there was a considerable gap between the cost of playing at a municipal and a private club. Now it has narrowed.

The private clubs have their problems too. Most now don’t have waiting lists but lots of vacancies, which means that as their bills have risen their income from membership has dropped.

The reasons seem to include the fact that people now live particularly busy lives with commitments at the weekend and certainly with less time for golf, a situation that is not helped by the problem with slow play on the golf course.

So members at private clubs are more likely to consider how often they play and whether it is sufficient to justify paying the constantly rising subscriptions. Some obviously decide against and instead play occasional golf with friends or with societies. So the clubs lose money. So the subscriptions go up. So more people leave – or less are likely to join.

To deal with this potentially ruinous financial circle private clubs are making increasingly attractive offers, reduced subscriptions, phased in subscriptions, the scrapping of joining fees, golf with meals . . .

Among these special deals, for example, is one Merseyside club offering £675 for full seven-day membership and no joining fee. That is only £200 more than the Wirral municipal adult contract and, of course, the standard of the private golf course and clubhouse facilities are better.

There are similar offers elsewhere. The result is that many golfers at the municipals leave to join a private club.

About 50,000 paid rounds of golf were played at Arrowe Park last year. But that figure was exceptional, boosted by the surge in interest in golf caused by the Open at Royal Liverpool.

The more usual figure is about 40,000. But back in the 1980s the figure was as high as 70,000. The reason for the drop of about 30,000 is explained by Michael Wishart who says: “Like all municipals we are under pressure because of the challenge from the private clubs.”

But like other senior citizens, paying less than £5 a week for a contact which allows him to play every day if he wished and was able, he is happy, saying: “It’s super value. You would not go anywhere else. It’s the best municipal on Wirral, if not on Merseyside.”

In addition to the special 75th anniversary golf competition and cabaret each member of the Arrowe Park club was given a commemorative pitchmark repair fork and a ball marker. But he says: “Yes, I suppose it is disappointing the anniversary did pass so quietly.”