Recent Lockdown Diaries guest Ryan Cairns, who features as a monthly contributor to Compleat Golfer, discusses his new par-three golf adventure alongside Peter Matkovich with WADE PRETORIUS.
Read Part 1 about his place in the game and the new standard of golf on tour HERE
Well, yeah. It’s a links par-three course. It started off, I do some work with Peter Matkovich – he’s an amazing human being, I absolutely love spending time with him – so we were in between meetings at Royal Harare the one day, and he loves drinking tea and he wakes up at 4am in the morning. He won’t fraternise with clients after six, you know, if they want to go for dinner. I’m kind of like the sales guy and I’ll be like, Peter, these guys want go for dinner tonight, and he says: ‘No! It’s after six.’ He’s probably loving this lockdown right now. But he says, if they want a breakfast meeting he’ll meet them for tea at 3:30am in the morning. It doesn’t matter how early. If they want to meet earlier, he’ll meet them.
Anyway, we were having a cup of tea at Royal and it was sort of mid-morning, we were in between two meetings, and I just asked Peter if we could go down to the driving range which is a piece of land that we could maybe turn into something. I grew up at Royal and I always used to imagine it being a links-type of course and, anyway, he said to me, ‘No, no, no. You’ve told me about this and I’m not interested in doing this project.’ So, we were walking down and he’s complaining the whole way and I said, ‘Come on Peter, please. I just want you to have a look at it.’
I didn’t know that he’d actually already been down there earlier in the day whilst I was on the range or somewhere. My dad had told him about the project. Anyway, he’d got down there, and whilst we walking down a couple of hours later, he’s complaining, playing it up a bit, he then just gives me this piece of paper with this design on it, and he surprised me. He’d gone down and actually done this whole design himself.
It’s six holes, every hole has a different wind direction, which is not something I would have thought about doing, but that’s why Matkovich is who he is. Yeah, six holes, three tees per hole so you get like 18 different yardages, wind directions, and it’s all under floodlights. There’s a couple of double greens like St Andrews’ big double greens, all bent grass, bunkers.
It’s really, really amazing. We started building it about five, five and a half months ago and it’s a couple of weeks away from being playable now. So, you’d better come up as soon as the flights are back open, Wade. You’re going to have to come now.
WADE: Right, when those borders open, I’m there. It sounds phenomenal. Let’s talk quickly, when you talk about floodlights, how strict are you going to be on dress code?
CAIRNZY: Well, I mean at night time, it’s going to be pretty casual. We’re throwing ideas around, about doing like a barefoot golf on a Friday night, have live music playing, one of those blow-up cinema screens for when golf is back on, PGA Tour coverage, we will be blowing up our cinema screen. We are building a venue at the moment, it’s like a gin bar, pizza oven, everything in the jacaranda trees. So it’s like its own little clubhouse.
And the idea is for people to sit on this wooden deck under the stars whether they’re playing golf or if they’re not playing, they can watch PGA Tour coverage from sort of 8pm, or put a movie on for the kids or something on the weekends. But, yeah, so the dress code isn’t going to be front and centre.
Obviously, during the week and in our times as a golf club, we’re a premium club, so you’e not going to have people walking in and out in Havaianas and boardies, but on the weekends and at night time we’re going to have some fun events, just trying to attract the sort of different demographic and younger crowds to start playing golf and enjoying it.
WADE: That’s what it’s about. There are so many different people out there, you’ve got to try and figure out new ways to attract golfers, because you’re not going to get everyone going in the collars and the belts and so on.
CAIRNZY: Yeah, exactly … we had a little bit of pushback to start with, from a couple of older members. But I went out of my way and actually took them down there in a golf cart when I heard. Anyone who may have felt like the idea was a little to out there, I asked for 10 minutes of their day to show them exactly the plan. The response has been phenomenal. I mean, now, those older members – I mean the one member, I think he’s 82 years old, and the club is 122 … he’s been there a long time, and something like this isn’t or rather wasn’t his cup of tea. Guess what? Now he can’t wait for it. He’s gotten past the point of being able to play 18 holes, and this to him now is right up his alley. So, he’s super excited. We all are.
