PETITION Save Moore Park from being reduced to 9-holes

Moore Park golf course has started a petition to stop it from being reduced to 9-holes.

If you haven’t heard already, a bunch of Sydney councillors including Lord Mayor Clover Moore are keen to see Moore Park Golf Course reduced to 9-holes to create more green space for the high-density community living nearby.

Moore Park golf course is a public golf course, open to any member of the community who wishes to come and play golf. It is also one of Australia’s busiest golf courses that sees 60,000 rounds of golf played every year.

If you’re not sure where Moore Park Golf course is located, it’s about a 5-minute walk from the 360 hectares that make up Centennial Parklands. It’s also about the same distance again from blocks of high-density housing – all constructed and approved by the City of Sydney during the past five years.

We’re told that the City of Sydney doesn’t actually have the power to change the use of the land, ultimately that will be a Federal decision given it is Crown land. However, the momentum is growing and they can certainly pressure the powers that be to take action.

Karrie Webb has already shown her support by signing the petition.

If you also want to sign it, click the link to Stop Moore Park Golf course being reduced to 9 holes.

If you need more convincing, Richard Hinds wrote a great piece at the ABC last week:

The current figures also represent a natural decline, from the “Greg Norman” boom of the 1990s when most private clubs had long waiting lists and there was enormous competition for tee times at even the most modest public courses, to more sustainable numbers.

Cr Moore might use these figures to suggest golf courses are now an indulgence. Yet the citadels under attack, inner-city public courses, are still generally well-utilised and also enduring monuments to the game’s relative social equality.

Rod Morri’s article for Golf Australia magazine is also fantastic suggesting golf needs to convey its role in the community a little better:

The game doesn’t need to be an either/or proposition and it would be foolish for golf to pursue a model that insists on having exclusive use of a publicly owned resource as large as a golf course.

The game can comfortably co-exist with other activities and with some creative thinking there is no reason golf can’t be the centrepiece for some thriving urban spaces.

It works at The Old Course at St Andrews where, every Sunday, about the only thing you’re NOT allowed to do on the Old Course is play golf.