By Rahul Banerji
Ashleigh Barty may not seem the most obvious opener in a conversation about golf but with Declan McCollam, you get more than what you see.
“She’s a member of my club in Brisbane and lives two doors away from us,” says the former PGA professional turned industry insider and currently general manager of the upmarket Prestige Golfshire property just outside of Bangalore.
“Won the club championship too. Very good golfer. And of course, she’s a top tennis player,” he says of the 2021 Wimbledon women’s singles champion who is a member of the Brookwater Golf and Country Club back home.
From playing golf around the world in a 30-year professional career to managing courses in Europe, the United States, Australia and West Asia, McCollam has pretty much seen it all.
And he is surprisingly at ease with the India assignment given his professional profile.
“I’ve always liked India, and I’m very comfortable here,” says the genial Aussie.
“Everyone thought that it was strange that I agreed to come out to India, but I’ve always loved coming here.”
After an extended run as a pro that included an appearance at the Indian Open, McCollam made the shift into helping manage the game, first in Germany and in the US for the past two decades with Troon Golf.
Teetimetales sat down with McCollam for a wide-ranging conversations coving his years in golf management, his parent company and the present assignment. Excerpts:
On his background
I gave up playing professionally in 1989 and went to work in Germany at a US military base just outside Frankfurt and ended up staying on for 12 years.
In the interim I started a golf school in Florida in the winter in West Palm Beach. I was also playing some mini tour events in the European winter time when I first met the guys from Troon Golf in 1995 in Arizona.
At that stage they were looking at going into Australia and over a period of 4/5 years getting to know them, they told me they were definitely opening in Australia in 2000.
So after 12 years I gave up working in Germany and America and went back to Australia to join Troon.
I was home only for about 12 months and we decided to open up our Dubai office so I moved there and then returned to Australia.
Then we opened our office in Geneva so I went here and ran our European operations up until 2012.
After that it was back home again and I took over our Australian operations. Then last year, I moved here which everyone thought was very strange but I’ve always liked India, when I played here before.
Also, our business here is growing so …
On his time at Golfshire
It’s been fantastic. The Prestige company is quite a special one, it’s a family run business basically and the family are very deeply involved.
This is a great facility and has enormous potential and we’ve just got this sports complex that’s opened up, the hotel )a Marriot property) is due to come on line soon.
They are great people to work with and really want to make this place very special. Last year we were voted the no. 1 course in India by the industry and that was a huge bonus, a huge feather in the cap.
We now have the Prestige Masters tournament coming up, it’s a great event and we’ve got entries from all over India. It’s fully sold out. People basically are just itching to get out and play golf.
On how Troon Golf came in
Owners or equity firms that have shares in golf courses approach us and want to know basically what our methodology of running an establishment is.
Troon Golf don’t have a single methodology, so we build plans for specific properties. With 640 courses that we manage worldwide, we’re the biggest in the world by far.
The next one is I think 60-something courses.
Basically we are a third party manager. We don’t own own any golf courses except Troon North . The owner of the property will come in and say we want you to run out property and we’ll pay you this much. We do the running.
On Prestige Golfshire
It’s a very amateur friendly golf course and the great thing about this course it that its one grass, from tee to green so it’s very easy to manage from the agronomy angle.
At the moment, our course occupancy is running at probably 63, 64 per cent capacity, averaging over a year, We’ve still got capacity to spare.
Weekends are pretty busy though. You won’t get on if you haven’t booked till after one o clock.
On the pandemic
Funnily enough, with all the negatives, golf worldwide has got a boost during the Covid pandemic. Course capacity figures everywhere are up.
For us here too, the demand has gone up and we’ve increased out green fees in the recent past. That is only possible when there is a demand, so overall, it’s been tough but also with a positive side.
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