I think whats happening in the K club is being replicated in every golf club that decided to stick houses on the lands as well a “Championship Golf club”. I along with 3 others played Moyvalley on Wednesday last, there were 4 playing golf in total, us, and we had a voucher= income for the day 0
Huge 3/4 built houses scattered around the course, silly silly.
That club was €50,000 to get in, then you paid your sub, now its from €39 per week. 
I look forward to the green acres of the Kunt Club returing to nature -it will make a wonderful walled reserve for wildlife.
That’s a shocking decline and fall.
I know people who remortgaged to get club memberships. Memberships they now couldn’t give away (given they have an annual cost associated with them). They’re not making any more golf clubs near Dublin you know. The underlying meme was that in future the course would be redeveloped as apartments and the members would all retire rich.
The pyramid has many testicles.
my brain has now truly fried, definitely. Are you sure you don’t mean tentacles?
May a Bertillion of them rain down on you.
Oh how true,and a sentiment which will eventually HAVE to be translated into action for a good deal of the Tiger Era developments…many of these flights of fancy will never achieve a level of productivity or desirability so I say Demolish now !
It may not be fashionable to even admit to think it,but DeValera`s vision of an agrarian Island peopled by a hard working but satisfied populace may well be something we have to re-examine even if it jars with the Knowledge Based Economy principle
I organised an event at the K-Club in the late 90’s and spent quite a bit of time there and even then, amidst all the hype, I found the place a souless dump. The clubhouse really had not much more to it than a standard suburban golf club. I didn’t see any Jack B. Yeats’ on the walls. Nothing going for it at all that I could see, other than a passable golf course. It’s Kildare’s Dubai - a real Emperors New Clothes job with no bottom to it at all.
And I agree with others who are pointing to the bursting of the golf club bubble in general. A lot of clubs started charging laughable subs and green fees in recent years. I have a ton of anecdotal evidence that those days are long, long gone now and that prices are falling right back.
Now that really would be - take the air out of the ball, fold up the chairs, turn off the lights, the party’s over!
For example, out before 9.30am in Luttlestown €19 for a round of golf, €30 beyond weekdays obviously.
We play the older and newer courses, and no complains when we play say Tullamore, a magnificent 100 year old club, but nobody enjoyed New Forest, which was €50 a head, Carton are still looking for €75 for a Saturday… 
The Jack B Yeats were there alright. Maybe you didn’t get to the inner sanctum 
You have to ask where the lack of satisfaction comes from. Most people I know are hardworking but not so satisfied. I’m not sure it being an agrarian island would be any better than it being knowledge based.
I think the issue is that a lot of people have drifted through life lately. When I was 19 years old you had to do a modicum of planning that involved “I can’t get a job here, what’ll I do” whereas a generation drifted into work without having to do too much thinking about it. They epitomised “I want it all, I want it all, I want it now”.
Ages ago I wrote a piece about wanting a grand piano - still do actually - and how I felt it was better to work and save for such than it was to put it on my credit card (which I could if I wanted because I had the credit limit). I still aspire to that piano but the issue relates to housing it at the moment. I mean I could blow savings on it at this stage.
I’ve been wondering how we approach this in the future. I’m utterly against DeVs shamrock Disney fantasy because I wouldn’t fit into it. I’m inclined to think we need to really assess how we educate people in terms of critical thinking and related stuff. When I was at school, civics was a doss class and I really regret this. We now have transition year and everything but we have a generation with zero interest in how they can affect the future collectively to a great extent.
I think it’s in the interests of the political parties to get into a mindset where they get new thoughts into their structure; that they learn to re-invent. I don’t think any of them have realised this. Like the record labels, they cling to outdated models of operation. Even the Green Party and the now defunct Progressive Democrats clung to those models as did, to some extent Libertas. Amhran Nua such as they are/were seemed to operate on the “anything but anyone else” premise.
I think it’s also in the interest of the media to look at how the future can be shaped and not to cling onto the past. Given that the biggest selling paper in the country appears to be the Sindo which is about as uncreative a media operation as you can get in Ireland, it doesn’t look like they have it either.
In the meantime…we’re somewhat rudderless.
Has no-one ever told you Bob that rent is dead money
Wha?
I’m just drawing the comparison between buying or renting a house, & membership & not of a golf club.
There are a lot of people out there who thought that membership of a GC was sure thing.
I’ll have you now I had an exclusive Access Some Areas pass thank you very much.
OK,
His friends consider the tragedy to be…what? Justine are you TRYING to make me write something nasty about a selfless servant of the Irish nation?
I [used] to know a guy who took out a loan, not a mortgage, a loan in the tens of thousands to pay the entry fee for a golf club. This is several years back.
The yearly sub was in the tens of thousands too, absolutely ludicrous.
He did it solely because he wanted to be a member, for the kudos, he wasn’t even a golfer.