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Other than the grumbling from the non-golfing fraternity throughout the year, it will be a safe bet, particularly if the club is not self-sufficient and is over-reliant on the HOA’s homeowner’s levies to keep it afloat, that the golf course will be a ‘well-debated item on the agenda at every AGM.
The irony is that with this discussion, there should be no debate.
Apart from working with a number of golf estates, in both the pre-opening and post-opening phases, in the past, I have also lived at and owned property on two well-known golf estates.
The summary of this experience suggests that the following ‘failings’ within the estate’s communications, community ‘DNA’ – call it what you will – will often be the failure to:
1. Get the community to see itself as a ‘whole’.
2. Get the golfers to step away from the idea that the golf course is their fiefdom and some sort of private preserve.
3. Encourage non-golfers to try out the game.
4. Get the non-golfers to see the course as an element that enhances their property values.
5. Get non-golfers to see that the course is simply an inherent part of the estate, along with other amenities such as lawn bowling greens, the roads, a boat club, tennis courts, a country club, the perimeter fence, etc.
Point 5 defuses that rather ‘silly’ argument, by non-golfers and the rest of those short- sighted self-interest groups, which will be along the lines of ‘but why should I pay, as I don’t even play golf?
Needless to say, there are a number of responses to this type of vacuous ‘argument’, and despite the manifest temptation to ‘slay’ the speaker, the rebuttal should always be in the positive!
The bottom line is that a house will be, for many people, their principal and most precious asset. Safeguarding its wellbeing within a community takes a collective effort, within which there must be a little give and take in terms of everyone’s contributions, and everyone has an equal share in the responsibility for the upkeep of everything.
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So, the golfers need to be a little less parochial about ‘their’ golf course, while the non-golfers must exercise common sense if they want to jog or walk their dogs on or near its green spaces.
In the final analysis, homeowners should ask themselves the question that if they don’t play golf or tennis, or own a boat, then why are they living in a community that provides such facilities, if they don’t want to be involved with them?
