Wimbledon to expand after golf club members vote to sell for £65m

Piers Morgan, Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly, former cabinet secretary Lord Gus O’Donnell, and the 754 other members of Wimbledon Park golf club have voted to sell their 120-year-old club to All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) for £65m.

The golf club members voted 82% in favour of selling the 30-hectare (73-acre) golf club to the world famous Wimbledon tennis championship, which has fought a decade-long battle to expand the Grand Slam tournament on to the neighbouring golf club’s land.

Each of the golf club’s members will collect a windfall of £85,000 as a result of the sale as the club is owned by its members in a co-operative. To secure the sale, the All England club required the votes of at least 75% of the golf club’s members.

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Philip Brook, chairman of the AELTC, said: “The decision of the Wimbledon Park Golf Club members to vote in favour of the acquisition offer is a hugely significant moment for the AELTC and the Championships. We have achieved what we set out to do many months ago in having certainty in our planning for the future.”

Martin Sumpton, a chartered building engineer who has played golf at Wimbledon Park for more than 30 years, was the only member to speak out against the sale at a private meeting of members at a former church near the Houses of Parliament on Thursday night.

After the result of the vote was announced, Sumpton told the Guardian that: “120 years of playing golf at Wimbledon Park has ended because of greed. People wanted to take the money, and that’s hardly surprising. It is a lot of money.

“But it is a very, very sad day for the history of golf and the future of Wimbledon Park,” he added. “It’s not just the golf club that will be lost, but also all the employees who will be out of a job through no fault of their own.”

The All England club is desperate for the golf club’s land so that it can expand its facilities to match its Grand Slam competitors in the US, Australia and France who are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in state-of-the-art facilities for players and spectators. The AELTC first approached the golf club with a takeover proposal in 2008. That offer was rejected by the golf club board without discussion.

The tennis club, which has been hosting the British Open since 1877, came back with a £25m offer in 2015. That bid was rejected by 58% of members. This spring the tennis club upped the stakes to £50m – before making its “best and final” £65m bid. The All England club reckoned this offer – £170,000 for couples who both play at the club – would be too generous for even the most diehard golfers to reject.

Catherine Devons, 77, another long-time member of the golf club who also voted against the sale, said: “It’s very sad. I couldn’t tell which way it was going to go. I absolutely understand why people voted to sell – money talks.”

Morgan, McPartlin, Donnelly and O’Donnell were not seen at the vote under the vaulted ceilings of the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster on Thursday night. The golf clubhouse on Home Park Road in Wimbledon was deemed too small to accommodate all the members at the same time.

The celebrity golfers did not respond to requests to comment about how they intended to vote. O’Donnell said he abstained, because he serves on the All England board alongside Tim Henman. No matter how they voted, all members will collect an equal share from the £65m sale.

Debate over the merits of the takeover had fractured the peace and tranquillity of the golf club’s fairways, laid out on parkland created by Capability Brown in the 18th century. “It’s like Brexit,” Devons, said. “You are either for it or against it. The offer split members and put decades-long golf partnerships on the rocks.”

Following the vote to sell the club, the last ball will roll into the 18th hole on 31 December 2021, bringing to an end 123 years of golfing history.

Jenny Gaskin, chair of Wimbledon Park Golf Club, said: “This has been a long but thorough process and I and the rest of the board would like to thank all members who participated in and voted either in person or by proxy.

“2018 has been a period of considerable uncertainty and the decision of members, subject to the final approval of the court, has important consequences. 18-hole golf is set to continue for a further three years with 9 or 10-hole golf continuing until at least 31 December 2022 and hopefully beyond.

“It will be the objective of the new golf committee to ensure that we make the most of this period and that the high standard of golf we have enjoyed and the camaraderie of the clubhouse continues undiminished. In this, we have the full support of our new owners at the All England.”

The All England club, which collected £216m in revenue last year mostly from ticket sales and TV rights, said it needs the golf club’s land so that it can hold qualifying Wimbledon rounds at the main club. At the moment preliminary matches are held at the Bank of England sports ground, 10 minutes’ drive away in Roehampton. The club argues that holding warm-up games at the main location is crucial to ensure new players get the “experience of Wimbledon”.