John Caven, a man with an impressive PGA CV

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
It's a long since I heard from PGA professional John Caven who succeeded me as Director of Golf at Meldrum House Golf Club, Oldmeldrum when I stepped down as its first general manager to return to golf journalism in 1998. 
But John got in touch today with the news - to me, anyway - that that he is now general manager of the prestigious Glasgow Golf Club which has two courses - a parkland one at Killermont and a links course at Glasgow Gailes, where the Edward Trophy 36-hole open tournament was played at the weekend.
Picture above shows John, on the right, with the 2015 Glasgow Golf Club captain David Donaldson.
Caven's PGA career saw him become head professional at Oldmeldrum Golf Club from 1996 to 1998. Then he joined Meldrum House Golf as Director of Golf from 1998 to 2003 at which time he was recruited by Paul Lawrie to become his business development manager until 2007.

Then John became initially Director of Golf and later Operations Director at Loch Lomond Golf Club who also own Dundonald Links.

After six years there, Caven joined gWest, the as yet unopened golf course at Gleneagles, next to the Gleneagles Hotel courses. 
 ^"I was two years at gWest , which is owned by the Altajir family who own Highland Spring and were listed as number 1 on the Sunday Times Rich List for Scotland," said John.
So why has the gWest course never opened yet?
"It's all to do with housing. They have a planning consent but with the referendum at the end of 2014, the poor economy (on-going) and now the European referendum they have decided to wait until they believe the market is where it needs to be. They can afford to wait until they are ready," explained John.