Malcolm Campbell, The Scotsman, 13 January 2001

Two totally unrelated stories caught my eye this week. The first came in a rather intriguing press release, which emanated from that stretch of Irish coastline just south of Dublin where the delightful golf club known as The European lies.

Cutting through vague references to the Cookie Monster and that rather vulgar television programme, which features a man with a funny haircut sitting on a stool feeding the avarice of wannabe millionaires, there appeared the revelation that the owner of the European Club had received an offer for his golf course, from an unnamed prospective buyer, for a staggering £22.5 million.

If the amount of the offer was a shock in itself, you could have knocked me down with great aunt Mildred’s best boa when the epistle smugly went on to announce that the owner had actually turned it down.

Could it be true? Had the fellow been eating dodgy German beef? Had he won the Lottery three weeks out of the last four? Had he landed the contract for Elton John’s flower deliveries?

There had to be an explanation, and it surely wasn’t to be found in the press release’s claim that owner Pat Ruddy, golf-writer-cum-golf-course-architect, wanted to “persevere with his lifelong dream of establishing an international quality golf course of his own” - he’s done that already.

It surely couldn't be that after 14 years of building his dream course among the east coast sand dunes Pat thinks the interesting things he believes he can still do there are worth more than £22.5 million.

I have known Pat Ruddy for a long time and a more personable, shrewd and down-to-earth guy you couldn’t meet on a 20km hike, and when it comes to counting beans this is one Irishman who knows how many make five.

Great as the European Club surely is, could it really be worth £22.5 million, a record bid for any golf course in Britain or Ireland, as far as I can establish and certainly a record for any golf facility in Europe that doesn’t have a hotel or a housing development to support it?

Where is the financial sense in it all?

Suppose Pat Ruddy had taken the buy and run, how do you suppose the new owner was going to recover his investment? Not through green fees - the principal income for the club - that’s for sure.

Let’s try a little accountancy. Annual number of rounds, say 30,000 - a good average - and green fees currently around £70. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that even if he didn’t spend another penny paying the staff or maintaining the course, it would take the next 11-and-a-bit years just to recoup the outlay. Maybe there was a plan to build houses and a hotel to make more financial sense of it, who knows?

But even so - £22.5 million?

The European Club ranks somewhere near the lower end of the top 30 golf courses in Britain and Ireland depending on which poll you believe - if you believe any at all. And if it is indeed worth more than chubby Elton’s clothes and flowers allowance for a couple of months what, dare we speculate, are other courses in that top 30 valued at?

What price, say, for Kingsbarns, that gem just outside St Andrews that has created such interest around the world and would appear in most polls ahead even of Mr Ruddy’s masterpiece?

News of the offer for the European Club must have come as joy to the ears of Mark Parsinen and Art Dunkley, the American developers of the Fife course, who are surely already looking for another project to take on after they presumably sell on the Kingsbarns Links before too long.

On the basis of this week’s news, could the going price be £22.5 million, £25 million or even £30 million?

But stay! Something bothers me. Why would anyone issue a press release saying they had turned down an offer of £22.5 million? If they had accepted it, yes, but walked away from it?

Which brings me to the other seemingly unrelated story, the one concerning the 15-year-old girl who, encouraged by her mother, wants to pad out her youthful figure with a couple of heaps of silicone.

The fact that her mother runs a beauty consultancy and the fact that there was obviously no chance of the doctors agreeing in the first place, points to a publicity stunt being at the heart of the matter.

For a minute there I nearly didn’t notice the parallel.