ROCK CONCERT IS ONE OF LOCKERBIE'S ENTERPRISING IDEAS

NEWS RELEASE FROM CLUBHOUSE

  By ROB EYTON-JONES

Three wash out summers have seen Lockerbie Golf Club lose much of its visitor trade on cancelled party bookings.  Over the same time the economic climate has had a shrinking effect on the club’s adult membership.

But rather than watching itself slide into the red the club has come up with a number of enterprising ideas to raise funds. 

The plan will swing into action this Saturday when the club hosts the first ever ‘Rockerbie’ concert featuring 10 well known local acts. 

“We have thought about doing something like this for a long time,” said Steve Robson, one of three club members behind the family concert.

“The dream would be to build it up to something like the Wickerman or T in the Park.  But we are starting with 10 good local bands from the area for this first year and we are looking for about 500 folk to come along.”

So far the club has sold 380 tickets for the event which will be staged in the club car park. The bands have all agreed to play for free and the range of music will be sufficiently diverse to appeal to every age group.

“Music is a big winner in the town and people like to go out and have a good time,” continued Steve. “There has been a jazz festival locally for six or seven years but this is the first concert of its kind for the town.”

The club is hoping the concert will raise £6,000, all to be ploughed back into the club.  New grounds machinery is an immediate concern but another top priority is its junior membership.

Ironically, as the senior numbers have dropped, the junior side of the club has thrived. There is junior coaching every Thursday night, tournaments every Saturday for those with handicaps, games nights, indoor target golf in the winter and family events. 

Over half the 47 juniors have handicaps; one of them plays with the Scottish under 14 boys, two compete for Dumfriesshire’s juniors, and another has been selected to play for Scotland in the World Deaf Championships taking place in Japan this October.

To further develop its junior section Lockerbie this week became the latest club to sign up to the national junior programme, ClubGolf.

“We are a small club but we spend a lot of time with the juniors,” said its junior convenor, Lawson McLean.   

“ClubGolf will help us further our ambitions by having a really good junior section which is where the future members of the club will come from.

“We are particularly trying to encourage girl golfers because we only have two at the moment, so ClubGolf will help us reach the schools and get more children interested.”

Mr McLean is planning to attend the two day Level 1 training course with the PGA, and hoping to encourage other members to join him.  It is all part of the plan which will help the club turn this particular corner.  

“This year might be very tight which is why we had to go to extraordinary lengths to raise funds,” he added.  “This weekend’s festival is a novel idea for fund raising and it's the younger ones in the club who are doing it, they have a lot of good ideas. 

“I'm sure it will be a success which we can build on for future years.”