In a year of both capital expenditure and expense cuts, RT Brown has been fortunate enough to continue his golfing travels across the globe, following the setting sun from Dubai as far west as California.

There is no doubt that it’s been hurting everywhere: from stories of cars abandoned at the airport as Dubai’s property development bonanza bombed, through the demise of the British Airways European Traveller’s sandwich (they were really rather good, Mr Walsh) as European economies reeled, to the ‘restaurant closed’ signs in the streets of San Francisco.

But, hey, it can’t all be bad: give in to the crisis and we will only make it worse. Both sides of the Atlantic the R word is receding with hopes that it doesn’t become a ‘W’, and we must believe it. The sun still shines (most of the time!), the grass is green, the sky is blue and we continue to play golf. We may be rather more discerning about how much we are prepared to pay, but, even with reduced budgets, there’s still no reason why not occasionally to splurge. The good news is that, if we shop around, the cost of a splurge is not as high as it was.

Everyone needs a bit of pampering now and then. What matters even more than it did before is that, when we pay for it, we get good value. And this is measurable in more than just financial terms. You will read in these pages that the best designed course on the Costa del Sol is Sotogrande; it’s gone up for the autumn golf season, but even at €115 this is extremely good value for a course of this quality. And there’s a further dimension. 

Whatever the price we pay, it is essential that at the end we feel that we have got what we have paid for. This doesn’t just mean a (hopefully satisfactory) round of golf at an excellent venue, but also that we have received the standards of service to go with it. Sotogrande is well supported in this department - and at that discounted web price, so it should be. However, this is not the case with every course (even with the proportionately lower standards expected of less expensive courses).

Being from the other side of the pond, I was brought up in an environment of quality service: golf and country clubs the length and breadth of the land provide it in a way that most British clubs could never dream of – and, yes, membership dues to go with it (often costing more per month than a full year’s British sub). For well-managed quality there is little to beat the US model.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised by Dubai. The golf facilities in this emirate are as good as I have seen anywhere: nowhere outside the US have I seen a group of clubs where it is so consistently clear that the money has been spent and spent well. Good course designers and good clubhouse architects with 

budgets in scale with their impressive objectives. The green fees are higher, but they’re worth it.

But when it is all built and operating it’s not just the quality of the facilities, and number and ability of the staff operating them. There’s a further quality which is priceless: even if clubs have to cut the costs, please don’t cut the smile. In my experience Dubai delivers this in a way that the Italians (and in their own way the Irish) also do.

Much of the rest of Europe can learn a lot from this. The nicer the smile, the more we smile. The more we smile, the more we return. The more we return, the more we spend... 

Sincerely yours, 

R T Brown 

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