KEY POINTS:
Clubs have signalled sufficient support for an ambitious project promoted by New Zealand Golf to go ahead.
Eighty-three of this country's 392 clubs have indicated they will join Golf Nation, NZG's response to falling club membership.
NZG estimates at least 60 per cent of the clubs are in financial difficulty, at a time when membership numbers are dropping but labour and course maintenance costs are rising.
Club membership has fallen at an average of 2 per cent a year in recent years, with overall figures slipping from 129,902 in 2004 to 123,924.
Clubs joining Golf Nation will commit themselves to a series of criteria, including transferable memberships, which will enable members to play at other clubs at no or minimal additional cost.
NZG originally targeted an uptake of between 80 to 100 clubs to make the project viable in its early stages.
Chief executive Bill MacGowan yesterday said he was happy with the response, although there was concern about pockets of resistance in top of the South Island and north of the Harbour Bridge in Auckland. Not one club in Nelson Bays or Marlborough had signed on, while the uptake in North Harbour and Northland was too thin to make the package viable in that area.
- NZPA