A South Australian club is experiencing strong growth on the back of some innovative membership offerings – including a fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) category.

Thaxted Park Golf Club just south of Adelaide has grown its membership by 73 percent in the past four years, from 642 in 2020 to 1014 in 2024.

Its MyGolf numbers have soared from 28 in 2023 to 104 this year.

Part of the secret is a set of membership categories that covers most contingencies, with the FIFO category being one of the most interesting and possibly unique. The McLaren Vale club has quite a few members who work interstate and at the Roxby Downs mine, for instance, who have taken it up by providing a letter from their employer.

“It’s mostly people who are leaving Adelaide and going out, whether it’s to the mines or whatever they do,” said club General Manager Allen Guyett.

Another interesting category is for the “sportsperson under 30”, which is $850 and targeted at local athletes who cannot play regular golf because of time constraints. “If you can’t commit to 12 months, you pay a six-month membership and you play outside the football season or the reverse for a cricketer or baseball player,” said Guyett.

Thaxted Park also has under 25 and under 35 membership packages and the results speak for themselves.

The club is booming having capitalised on the nationwide spike in interest in golf that came with the Covid-19 pandemic. Several years ago, it sold off 4.5 hectares of land to a developer for housing, at the same time paying down debt.

Soon it will have a new fully-netted driving range with ball-tracking technology, all open to the public with bar facilities. “We hope that will bring new members to the club as well,” said Guyett. “There will be 70 new houses by next year, and we hope that we might pick up some members or at least visitors to the clubhouse from that as well.”

Guyett says clubs need to think laterally on membership. “You can’t live in the past. Your five, six, seven-day membership isn’t necessarily what everyone wants to do. As everyone’s aware, the cost of living is going through the roof. We want people here all the time because it’s not just golf. They’re supporting the clubhouse in terms of food and drink. The more people that we have here, the better for us.”

Golf Australia’s South Australian State Manager David Watson said Thaxted Park needed to be applauded for the changes that it has made. “The innovative way that the club has approached its membership categories is impressive and it fits with our national strategy in the sense that it makes golf a game for everyone. In the case of FIFO workers, they deserve to be accommodated in this way,” said Watson.

“In the case of sportspeople under the age of 30, it makes allowance for people who play other sport and don’t have a lot of spare time. We love the way that the club has approached this and we encourage other clubs to think along these lines.”

Information about Thaxted Park