Making successful pitch in new game

INTERVIEW: PAUL McGINLEY:AN EIGHTH operation on his troublesome knee, a throwback to his old Gaelic football playing days, looms for Paul McGinley at the end of this season. Yet, there is no weary grimace. No, these days the glass-half-full philosophy ensures a grin seems permanently affixed to his facial features.

The future may include another surgical procedure but it also features many other things: he is still playing on tour, he is mooted as a future Ryder Cup captain and, wise man, he has his finger in a number of business ventures.

On this day at Wentworth – where this week the Dubliner will get reacquainted with the West Course for the BMW PGA Championship – McGinley is enthusiastically espousing the virtues of one of those ventures (clubstohire.com) which, in less than a year in operation, has eased the plight, financially and in terms of convenience, of many a golfer on holiday.

In offering top-of-the-range clubs to golfing tourists at prices considerably less than airlines charge to transport clubs, clubstohire.com – which operates out of Malaga, Faro and Dublin airports and with planned openings in Edinburgh and down the line in the US – has found a niche in the market. Not only does the service make economic sense, with weekly hire for a set of clubs from €35 compared to the airline baggage costs, it takes away the inconvenience of lugging clubs and worrying if they will get to the same destination as yourself.

The idea for the business venture came from Belfast businessman Gerry McKernan. A multi-award winning entrepreneur involved in businesses as diverse as ophthalmic lens manufacturing to masonry, he confesses to a lively mind which is ticking over all the time. The inspiration for this venture, though, was hardly rocket science.

“We were holidaying in the Algarve in 2010 and my nephew was coming to join us and my wife sent me to the airport too early to pick him up. I sat for an hour watching boys carting kids and luggage and clubs and I thought, ‘there has to be an easier way to do this’,” explained McKernan, a keen golfer who is a member of Malone and Ballyliffin golf clubs.

The upshot was he gave the germ of the idea to an acquaintance, Tony Judge, a former director of golf at Mount Juliet and former chief executive at St Margaret’s. Judge knew a good proposal when he heard it and had an idea, to bring McGinley – with whom he had studied marketing in DIT – on board. In less than a year, the three partners have seen the baby steps mature into big strides with the company recording month-on-month record performances.

“There’s lots of good ideas I come up with that are consigned to the bin,” added McKernan. “Thankfully, with Tony and Paul, we have brought a team together that has enthusiasm and focus.”

McGinley’s own business acumen meant he was sold on the idea fairly quickly. “As you know, I went to the College of Marketing with Tony in Dublin and I’ve got another degree in international business in America. I’ve always been interested in business and this was a really good fit. I’m involved in four businesses outside of playing golf and I’ve quite a big say in them.

“As I’m sort of coming towards retirement age and my golf seems to be deteriorating a bit, it’s important I have other outlets. I’m really enjoying the clubs-to -hire project. It’s nice seeing a young company like this grow; trying to help it and trying to introduce the guys to contacts in the industry. Like all good business ideas, when you first hear it, you think ‘Jayzus, why didn’t I think of that, it’s so simple’. Some of the best ideas in business come that way. When Tony and Gerry explained this idea to me, it was such a simple concept, I immediately said ‘yeah, okay, I’d love to be involved and I can help with my contacts in the industry’,” said McGinley.

With stores at Faro in the Algarve and Malaga in Spain along with a meet-and-greet hire service in Dublin and a scheduled opening in Edinburgh next month, there are plans to expand to Murcia, Alicante and Lisbon and also into the States with a heads of agreement in place to open a store in Myrtle Beach next spring and ongoing discussions in a number of other airports stateside. “The market almost tells you where you need to be,” said Judge. “People are tired of paying the charges and of the inconvenience. We’re not trying to conquer the world in a day. It’s a big resource issue, staff-wise, money-wise, everything.”

As things stand, travelling golfers get to play with top-end brands, with TaylorMade, Callaway, Wilson, MD and Nike among the manufactured clubs on hire, and, as McKernan points out, the plan is to allow players customise their sets.

As he put it, “the aim is at some point you should be able to customise your bag. We don’t have the sophistication yet to offer a sufficient selection that could make everyone happy – for example, if you play with a Ping driver, Cobra fairway metals and Mizuno irons, that’s what we’d want to be able to give you eventually.” He expanded: “We’ve kind of catered for everything, graphite and steel shafts, stiff and medium, mens, ladies, kids and lefties. We even have sets for guys who want shafts one inch longer than normal.”

The idea has developed in less than a year to become a winning concept. “It’s gas, we get groups of 12 or 16 and half of them will have booked clubs and half will have brought their own. The guys who haven’t booked with us end up looking in envy at the latest, top-of-the-range clubs their pals have,” said McKernan.

‘I’m still keen on playing’

PAUL McGINLEY, playing on a career money exemption on the European Tour, has his fingers in a number of pies but has no intention yet of putting away the clubs. He still retains that competitive drive which was showcased in playing a part on three winning Ryder Cup teams.

“I don’t know if golf is still keen on me playing but I’m still keen on playing it. I love competing and I love travelling. I’ve had a very slow start to the year, which has been very disappointing. But it’s a long year and I’m long enough playing to know it can pick up very quickly . . ., it’s what I want to do. That’s what my first love is. I want to play golf. The businesses I am doing, they are all going really well and I enjoy being involved in them, but I still don’t get as much kick out of them as I do competing. I still feel there’s plenty in there, it’s what I want to do more than anything. Once I still have that love to play and practice and grind it out, that’s as long as I’ll be playing it.”

With a strong interest in golf-course design, McGinley believes what he refers to as “wham-bam golf” is rewarded at tournaments, often by commercial necessity, are brought to new courses.

“There are very few courses (on tour) that don’t reward the wham-bam style of golf . . . Wentworth is an example of one that doesn’t, the TPC Sawgrass is another. Interestingly, when you get a golf course that doesn’t reward the wham-bam kind of player, the older player seems to come through, KJ (Choi) at Sawgrass. Toms.

“The quality and style of golf courses we play nowadays very much dictates success. A lot of the courses we play are not like TPC or Wentworth. The course where Darren Clarke won (Pula in Majorca) was a wonderful test of golf, a short course but it was brick hard. It was all about controlling the ball and hitting it on the fairway so you could then spin it off and into the green.

“Unfortunately, only five or 10 per cent of the courses we play on Tour are like that. Most of them have big, wide fairways like the London Club, where we played the European Open a few years ago. The Tour has very much gone that way because commercially, the Tour has to go where the money is and the money usually comes from new courses which are trying to promote themselves, so they are normally 7,300 or 7,400 (yards) and greens as green can be so they look good on TV.”