Sporting chance to fill the coffers

Happy hacker is how I’d describe my golfing life. Like many I was bitten with the golfing bug as a young lad and spent many delightful, frustrating and exciting days honing my skills on the fairways and greens of Tayside and Fife.

What I didn’t appreciate was how lucky I was to be brought up in a region peppered with some of the world’s finest and most historic golf courses.

I certainly had no concept of just how big business the game I had taken to my heart was.

Golf today is a truly global sport with hundreds of millions of active players worldwide and the power to draw a TV audience your average commissioning editor could only dream of.

Golf also offers a strong business proposition, with companies keen to tap into the seemingly endless stream of fans financially willing and able to indulge their love of the game.

In July, Tayside and Fife will again be at the centre of the golfing universe when the greatest championship of them all – the Open – returns to Carnoustie after an 11-year gap and the Senior Open is staged on the historic links at St Andrews.

The staging of the Open alone is worth tens of millions of pounds to the local economy wherever it goes.

April’s edition of Business Matters shows how local companies like DP&L Golf and Ron McLeod’s Golf Shop are preparing for the bumper summer ahead.

VisitScotland chief Malcolm Roughead offers his expert insight into the national strategy to grow golfrelated spending, while Dundee Airport braces itself for an influx of corporate and private jet traffic as highrollers make their way to Courier Country for the biggest week of the year.

And, as ever, we have teed up the latest news and views from the commercial life of Scotland.

Enjoy.

“Golf offers a strong business proposition, with companies keen to tap into the seemingly endless stream of fans financially willing and able to indulge their love of the game.

Golfing greats celebrated in portrait form at the Macdonald Rusacks hotel in St Andrews.