Golf still ‘Gold-en’ for evergreen Gordon

30/10/2024

Spend any length of time talking to Gordon Goldie and it’s impossible not to be struck by his infectious passion for golf. “I’m still in love with it,” says the Troon born and raised PGA Professional, who is now 78 years young.

This summer, the evergreen entrepreneur celebrated the half-century anniversary of his Chingford Golf Range business where he is invariably at work first thing every morning mowing the greens. “I’m in and out during the day and keeping everybody on their toes!” says Goldie.

He first picked up hickory-shafted clubs as a young boy, learning to play in his hometown on the west coast of Scotland. The enthusiasm for the sport that he experienced back then has never waned. Indeed, it was behind his 1974 decision to establish Chingford Golf Range – one of the very first places of its kind to open in or around London.

Goldie had served a lengthy apprenticeship at nearby West Essex Golf Club and took the view that, beyond the fairways and greens of Essex and Middlesex’s various clubs, there was nowhere in the vicinity where aspiring golfers could learn or hone their skills. That led him to approaching the powers that be within his local London borough of Waltham Forest, offering to build them a driving range if they could provide the land. Which is how, in the mid-1970s, he ended up opening for business with eight uncovered bays at Chingford Rugby Club.

“It was basically a board to hit off, a safety screen and they aimed at the rugby posts!” says Goldie, recalling the offer for his customers in those trailblazing early days. “I had a groundsman’s hut, a cement-mixer which I cleaned the golf balls with. I poured them back into an old bath and scrubbed them with a brush and just sold baskets of them – small, medium and large – scooping them out of the bath.

“Such was the novelty that it was successful. I did not think about the money; I just wanted the customer to come along and hit a bucket of balls and say how wonderful it was that he could hit 100 balls and didn’t have to pick them up. Any money that I made, I put it back into new mats, new balls or the development of the driving range. My enthusiasm was the catalyst that made me go forward.”

They were colourful times for Goldie who had to rub along with his fellow tenants at the rugby club. There were a fair few challenges, not least at weekends.

“I opened at 9 o clock on a Saturday, closed at 12 o clock and picked the balls up for two hours,” says Goldie, who then had to sit and wait as rugby temporarily replaced golf on the premises. “They played their match at three o clock; it finished at half-past four and I opened up again at five o clock. Sunday morning, they played rugby again, so I didn’t open until 1 o clock. But the rugby season was only September until April, so in the summertime I had a ball.”

The respective stakeholders eventually had enough of the situation. “They blamed me for the state of the pitches, I blamed them for the state of the pitches,” says Goldie, which led to the landlords offering a solution that led to the uneasy bedfellows going their separate ways. New rugby pitches were created nearby, while Goldie stayed put and threw his insatiable energies into a full-scale upgrade for Chingford Golf Range.

He employed a top architect to design a new two-tier facility with accompanying reception areas. By 2006, he had secured a new long-term lease – and a sizeable loan to support his vision for the future. Nowadays, the memory of his 60-year-old self’s boldness is enough to make him shudder. But at that time, he could hardly forecast that within two years the banks would be feeling the pinch resulting from a global economic downturn. “The bank asked me to exit my account with them,” says Goldie. Which meant he ended up having to sell his house and use substantial equity to address his loan situation.

Happily, Goldie rode out the storm and sailed into smoother waters. His finances stabilised, allowing him to enjoy a successful and fulfilling business deep into his seventies when many folk of a similar age have long since given up any notion of work.

In the present era Chingford Golf Range is an operation that blends technology (including an indoor swing studio with Trackman and an indoor putting facility with a Zen green) alongside Goldie’s deep-rooted values about growing the sport. Unlike some target venues, his is not an entertainment hub where golf is only part of a wider offering that includes a restaurant, sports bar and more. Just as it was back in 1974, Goldie’s concept for a driving range is that it should still be “a learning centre” for his customers. “I want them to come up for half an hour, hit a bucket of balls and go,” says the Scot. “I’m not going into the restaurant business, I don’t want them to stay.”

At the heart of his business are fellow PGA Professionals Michael Perry and Ross Spurgeon, both of whom are long-term coaches at Chingford Golf Range. From the outset, 50 years ago, his team has featured – and nurtured – PGA Pros. Goldie also keeps his hand in with a spot of coaching for long-term contacts and friends. Back in the day he even made his own video ‘Gordon Goldie’s Armchair Golf Lesson’ at a time when such media was thin on the ground. “I said to myself I should be able to give my customers, the people I’m coaching, something tangible,” he says of his foray into filming. “It was so good that I converted it to DVD 20 years later and the content is excellent!”

Goldie lets nothing get in the way of his involvement in all aspects of golf. He has an enduring and strong involvement with the Essex PGA, whom he serves as its president. Gordon still plays at West Essex Golf Club - one of their longest-standing members - and his competitive credentials remain impressive. “I was runner-up in the Super-60s in 2012 and won the Superb 70s in 2016,” he says. To this day he still competes and teed up at Formby Hall in the latest edition of the PGA Super 60s.

“My objective would be to introduce more and more to the game of golf so that they can enjoy what I’ve enjoyed in my career. From growing up with hickory shafts in Troon in 1954 when I was eight years of age, to the wonderful places that I have visited not only in Scotland, but in Great Britain, Europe, America and South Africa. I’ve been all over the world with golf…”