A FAMILY AFFAIR AT LEE VALLEY
Popular Cork Golf and Country Club flourishes under its proud owners as 25th-anniversary approaches. By Brian Keogh
THE Harvard Business Review completed a study of family firms a few years ago and found them to be among the most successful organisations in the commercial world.
The reasons are myriad, but the boffins deduced that small — and not so small — family business are frugal in good times and bad, keep the bar high for capital expenditures, carry little debt and show a surprising level of diversification.
It’s little wonder then that Lee Valley Golf and Country Club, situated just 15 minutes west of Cork city, has become such a success story.
With its Christy O’Connor Jnr designed, 18-hole championship golf course, the Lee Valley Bar and Restaurant and its four-star holiday homes, this small resort is regarded as one of the best family-run golf facilities in the country.
The Keohanes — Jerry, Peg, Paul and David — are rightly proud of what has been achieved at Lee Valley since it opened in 1993 and as it prepares to host the Munster Seniors Amateur Open next week, Managing Director David Keohane explains that the family touch is what brings back those valuable return visitors.
“It’s a golf resort but it is a bit different because of the family input,” David explained. “We have our coach so it wouldn’t be unusual for us to bring a group of lads into a Cork City match on a Friday night or to bring a group down to Kinsale and show them around West Cork.
“With the family here, one of us will always go the extra mile to make sure the guests are looked after and that they keep coming back. We have a huge amount of repeat business and that’s testament to how we treat them.”
Much of Lee Valley’s core business comes from the local area but it is also a hugely popular destination for visitors from overseas, especially the UK, with groups enjoying the fact that they can stay on site and be ferried to the other great courses in the area by the staff.
“We have our 25-seater coach so we collect our guests from the ferry, the airport or the train station,” David explained. “And we will bring them to Lee Valley or drop them to Fota, Castlemartyr or Douglas and even bring them into town at night.
“Groups love the fact that we offer an all-in-one package so we book the golf for them and make life as easy as possible for the organiser.”
Far from the doom and gloom predicted in the wake of the Brexit referendum, Lee Valley has seen an upsurge in UK visitors.
Whatever the economic climate, this tightly run golf resort punches well about its weight.
“We have three revenue streams — bar, food and beverage; members golf and the holiday homes,” David explained. “If one drops down the other one picks up, so our 35 staff
are always kept busy.
“But primarily we are a golf course and that brings up the other two strands to the course. If the golf course is well-looked after, the other two elements do well too.”
The Lee Valley story is one of entrepreneurship and bravery and it is now beginning to reap the rewards.
The patriarch, Jerry Keohane, built the course in partnership with some business partners in 1991, opening in 1993 with an exhibition match between Freddie Couples and the designer, Christy O’Connor Jnr.
The business partnership was eventually dissolved with the Keohane family, who owned a bar in the city, taking over sole ownership of Lee Valley in 1999.
“Jerry does a lot of work on the course and he has built it up into one of the top championship courses in the city,” David explained.
“While he is 73 now, he is still out cutting fairways until 10 o’clock at night in the summer. He really loves the course. It is like his baby.”
The club’s annual, 54-hole Senior Scratch Cup is now one of the premier events on the calendar and the last amateur event captured by Shane Lowry in 2009, just a few weeks before he won the Irish Open at Baltray.
The players return year after year, not just because it is such a well-run event, but because the parkland course is one of the best maintained in Munster.
“We spent up to €350,000 on the course at the end of the recession,” David explained. “And we have planted nearly 12,000 trees and moved our tenth hole to make it a dogleg left.
“In the last three years, we have redesigned several tee boxes, put down four new ones and relaid another five.
“We have also put about 1,100 tons of sand on the fairways to improve drainage, so we made that capital investment, and it has not only improved the playability of the course in winter but also left the fairways in top condition for the summer.”
The pristine nature of the course is a credit to course superintendent James Mulcahy, who has been at the club since it was created and has literally watched it grow.”
Its membership has grown too and there are now 550 members, including 115 ladies in a strong women’s section.
“They are very active — a vibrant part of the club — and very successful too after winning the AIG Intermediate All Ireland twice in the last five years.,” Keohane said.
A former Interprovincial Championship venue thanks to the success of the Senior Scratch Cup, Lee Valley will follow next week’s Munster Seniors Championship by hosting the Munster Mid-Amateur next year.
All going well, more big GUI events will follow. After all, repeat business is a Lee Valley speciality. And with that family touch, each new arrival is greeted like a long lost friend.