Paxman on old golfers and Chinese Lamborghinis
to pay a £100,000 one-off fee to rejoin the golf and country club.
A survey by the club’s captain, Iain Scally, found that just 35 of the fullprice new memberships could be taken up by existing Wentworth players.
Members fear the club will become a “ghost town” amid concern that Reignwood has plans to develop one of Wentworth’s three golf courses by using the land for housing and hotels – a claim Reignwood denies.
In an article in the Mr Paxman wrote: “The members’ predicament is hardly up there with the fate of Aleppo. All that has happened is that Beijing has learnt that a golfer and his money can soon be parted.”
He described golf as a “tiresome” game he had failed to master and accused clubs of being “full of old people” who complain too much.
Paxman added: “Property has been one of the easiest ways to get filthy rich in Britain for generations. No one should be surprised that developers want to concrete over the fairways.”
Concerns of Wentworth’s members over Reignwood’s plans for the club will have been exacerbated by the discovery that its owner, Dr Chanchai Ruayrungruang and his 25-year-old daughter Woraphanit, visited Donald Trump, the billionaire property developer and presidential front-runner, at his Trump Towers headquarters in New York in January.
Mr Trump has has been criticised for trying to push through a hotel expansion and 2,000 holiday and residential homes at his golf resort at Menie in Aberdeenshire.
Wentworth members question whether the club will really need its three courses if membership is culled. Reignwood plans to cut the number of members from about 4,000 to just 888 – a number considered lucky in China.
The visit to Mr Trump was disclosed on Facebook by Miss Ruayrungruang, who along with her father is a director of Wentworth.
On the same trip to the US, Miss Ruayrungruang also posted a photograph of her sitting behind the wheel of a £1.8 million Bugatti Veyron in a car showroom in Beverly Hills as well as of a Lamborghini sports car.
The photograph chimes with concerns raised by Sir Michael Parkinson, the broadcaster and a long-standing member, who previously complained to that the Chinese owners were ignoring tradition to create a club for the “super rich” with a “car park full of Lamborghinis”.
Reignwood has insisted the new membership scheme is necessary to pay for £20 million worth of urgent improvements. It said it wanted to make Wentworth the world’s best golf and country club. The company added: “There are a significant number of members who have expressed an interest in the new membership structure.”