Course Updates
The Sale of Eagle Ridge GC
By Amy Foyster
www.turfmate.com.au
Andrew Davies and his family
are the owners of Eagle Ridge
Golf Course on Victoria’s
Mornington Peninsula.
At the end of last year, his family
made the difficult decision to
sell Eagle Ridge, so we spoke to
him about the sale process has
been going and the challenging
decisions they have had to make.
Can you please tell me a bit
about how long you have
owned Eagle Ridge Golf
Course?
“Our family has owned Eagle
Ridge Golf Course since the midnineties. It was originally part of
a broader resort down there that
my father-in-law had financed
and through a very complicated
wind up of that he ended up
owning the golf course. Unlike a
more traditional bank that would
have perhaps just sold it, he
decided to keep it.
“In about 2000- 2001 he built
the clubhouse and completely
redesigned the golf course
itself, working with Pacific Coast
Design, so the golf course has
now been in our family for
almost 20 years. We run a family
business that revolves around a
few different businesses, centred
round a finance company.
“The golf course is something
we have been very passionate
about. Ultimately the decision to
sell the club has been born out
of a family decision to wind up
a few of our business interests,
following my father-in-law’s
passing a few years ago. So we
put the course on the market
late last year.”
What has been your role in
this decision?
“My wife Katie Russo and I have
run the family group since 2007,
and Katie also has an operational
role, running marketing down
on the golf course. I have a
pretty hands on job overseeing
the operation. We have a general
manager down there who really
runs the show, but we get
involved in any major decisions
around capital expenditure or
major strategy decisions. I end
up down there about once a
week as there always seems to
be something big going on and
we take a pretty heavy interest,
particularly in the course side of
things.
“There are always challenges,
especially after ten years
of drought. In 2007- 2008
we actually made the pretty
significant decision to shut the
course for a summer and change
the grass on the fairways. And
the most significant cost of that
was actually the lost revenue not
the cost of changing the grass.
We went from a cool season mix
that just wasn’t coping in the
drought to a Santa Ana couch.
The fairways have now had their
fourth grow in season and they
are absolutely spectacular.
“It has been a decision that
certainly impacted the business.
I tried to convince the course
super we should do it in winter
but of course grass doesn’t grow
in winter. It was the busiest time
of the year for the golf course
and we were closed for four
months across summer, but it
has delivered a great benefit in
that it is now a course that holds
up in the dry and the wet. We
have halved our water use as a
result, which is good. There was
a bit of interest in the industry at
the time because most courses
would have done one hole at
a time over five or ten years,
whereas we made the decision
instead of being constantly
under maintenance to do it all
in one season so our customers
were inconvenienced completely
for a short period of time rather
than constantly. When you are
a members course you can get
away with doing the slower
maintenance, but as a public
access course people will just
walk away.
Golf Industry Central Winter 2013
23