DAVID MOON CELEBRATES 30 YEARS AT ST MELLION INTERVIEW – Golf News

April sees you celebrate 30 years at St Mellion. What are you most proud of in terms of how the resort has developed in that time?

I’m most proud of how we’ve managed to maintain the balance between being a golf resort and a members’ club. We have always had a very active membership – currently numbering around 700 – and been a very active resort, with a high volume of golf groups and residential parties, so it’s always been a fine balancing act to manage the demands of those two distinct interests, and I like to think we have managed to get that right.

When we opened the new hotel in 2012, we moved from being a 24-bed operation to being an 80-room resort, and that brought with it some challenges, but also provided an opportunity to grow the business.

Some resorts just rely completely on hotel guests and visitor green fees for their golf income, where we’ve managed to maintain a very healthy golf membership while also running a successful resort, and that’s been very rewarding.

Apart from the new hotel, we completely redeveloped the Kernow Course in 2008, and also made improvements to our flagship Nicklaus course in recent years.

We’ve recently invested £500,000 in a new buggy fleet, and we have also recently completed a £2 million refurbishment of the 18 cottages that we offer on the estate.

They are hugely popular with visitors and that investment has definitely paid off. We’ve also spent £500,000 refurbishing the health club and the changing rooms, so it’s a constant series of investments to ensure the resort continues to offer the very best facilities and high levels of service for all our members and guests.

How has your own role changed over the years?

My role has changed hugely since I first arrived in 1994 as Head Golf Professional. It was at the height of the club’s association with the European Tour, so I was excited to be immersed straight into hosting tour-level golf events. My duties were initially a mix of retail and coaching, and I did that

pretty much full time for the first six years. And then, in 1999, after St Mellion was sold by the Bond brothers to American Golf, my role changed from head professional to Director of Golf. Since then, my role has evolved, but I’ve essentially remained the golf manager and shaped the golf department to be a representation of me.

What is St Mellion’s unique selling point?

There are many elements that make St Mellion an attractive venue for members and guests, but chiefly it’s about the golf – having two 18-hole courses – the Kernow, which is a really good standard of resort course – and the Nicklaus Course, which, although I’m biased, I believe is one of the best resort courses in the UK. It’s only 6,284 yards long – which is short by modern championship standards – but every hole presents a challenge. Also, unlike some other resort courses, it doesn’t take six hours to play.

On top of that we’ve got some great practice facilities, amazing food and beverage offerings, and a variety of excellent on-site accommodation and leisure facilities.

All of that has combined to give us a very strong proposition to attract and retain members and grow our golf break business.

We see some golf groups come back here every year, and some come every three or four years, but they do come back, which is very positive.

St Mellion is part of the Crown Golf portfolio. What advantages does this bring to your members?

Apart from the obvious benefit of our members being able to play at Crown’s large portfolio of excellent courses throughout the UK, it makes us part of the company that is completely focused on golf and is helping to attract new people to the game by making it more inclusive and more welcoming.

That commitment to broadening golf’s appeal provides untold benefits across all of the clubs in the Crown group.

St Mellion has a high-profile tournament history, having hosted the B&H International Open for seven consecutive years back early 1990s. Would you like to see tournament golf return to the resort again some time?

I would love to see more tournament golf being held here, but commercially its quite a stretch to commit to top-level events these days. We hosted the English Seniors Open in 2007 and more recently hosted Challenge Tour events in 2022 and 2023, where the players raved about the quality of the course, which was very rewarding. I’d love to see a big match play event being held on the Nicklaus Course, as perfectly set up for that format.

If you had to pick a favourite hole on the Nicklaus course, which would it be and why?

That’s a very difficult one, because we’re blessed with many signature holes on the Nicklaus, including the 5th, 11th and 18th, but if you twisted my arm for just one it would be the 12th, which is a beautiful par-five through what is our version Augusta’s Amen Corner.

It plays straight through an avenue of pine trees, with a little creek down the right-handside that cuts in front of the green. It’s a world class hole on a world class golf course.