Scottish great Sam Torrance chips to the 13th green at Chisholm Park golf links during a pro-am tournament in November 1980. The 13th would be one of the holes taken for flood mitigation works under one council proposal. Future star Greg Turner is in the background, second from left. PHOTO: ODT FILES A golf course designer and former New Zealand Open winner says turning Chisholm Park into a 12-hole course would rob the city of potentially many millions of dollars. Greg Turner, who won the NZ Open in 1989 and 1997 before moving into golf course design, said he had always been a fan of Chisholm Park and its huge potential. The future of the course is under a cloud as changes proposed for flood-prone South Dunedin might result in the links course losing six holes. ‘‘It’s been frustrating looking at Chisholm for years, because it’s got the real potential to be a tourism asset for the city, and instead of that, they [the Dunedin City Council] don’t look at it that way,’’ he said. ‘‘They look at it as just a recreational amenity, and as a recreational amenity, then 12 holes is as good as, you know, as 18, but it’s not. ‘‘I don’t think they fully understand what it could be. ‘‘It could remain a community asset and be a real asset to the city, but they’ve never really cottoned on to that.’’ The course is owned by the council on a public reserve. He said work needed to be done to it to upgrade it and that centred on irrigation. ‘‘As it is at the moment, if they want to irrigate it, they want to charge the club to irrigate it. ‘‘So they don’t irrigate it, because they can’t afford it. And then, it’s a lose-lose, really.’’ He said golf tourism was now worth more than $400 million annually to New Zealand and two-thirds of that was in Queenstown. That number did not include domestic tourism, airfares or hundreds of millions of dollars invested in property. More courses were going up around Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes. He said the links — set beside the coast, with sandy, rolling turf — was the course which would attract tourists from inland Otago. ‘‘They need to upgrade the condition of the course considerably. And then when you start to get more visitor play and you get more national and international attention, then there’s more money comes in. It becomes self-fulfilling. But there needs to be a proper conversation about that, and it hasn’t really been had yet.’’ Chisholm Park had so much going for it, he said. ‘‘It’s a true links golf course, which is a rare commodity that is hugely appreciated amongst that golfing community around the world. ‘‘But it’s kind of taken for granted here. The truth is the views up around Lawyers Head there, I mean, they’re as spectacular as anything at Pebble Beach [on California’s Monterey Peninsula].’’ Land beside the coast used to be seen as waste land and it had been easy to build golf courses there. Now it had completely changed and coastal areas were more valuable and it was near impossible to build them there. Former Chisholm Park professional Andrew Whiley agreed the course was a tourism and a community asset. Mr Whiley — a former Dunedin City Councillor — questioned why there would be a need to get rid of a golf course which was held in such high regard nationally. When he was the professional at the course from 2003-15, there had been issues around the installation of the Tahuna wastewater pipe and sand dunes disappearing, but nothing had come of either of those, he said.
