Close House owner Sir Graham Wylie

The interview... SIR GRAHAM WYLIE

The owner of Close House reveals the inside story about the rebirth of the Newcastle venue, how he brought Lee Westwood to the North East, and why he’s always looking for ways to evolve and improve the estate

Close House is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its rebirth. How did you see the potential that was there in the site? I remember standing on the first tee box when I first bought the estate. There was an honesty box. I opened it up and there were Tesco vouchers, train tickets, there were IOUs. No cash at all. I’m thinking ‘I’ve got to sort this out, make it commercially viable’.

What led you to own a golf course in the first place? I actually did it as a favour to the University of Newcastle because that’s where I was educated. That’s where I started Sage Accounts. I wrote it at university. When I retired from Sage, I wanted to give a thank you to the University. We talked about lots of different things with the Vice Chancellor and nothing really appealed to me.

I was looking to buy a cottage, as a family second home to go on holiday. I don’t know why, but the estate agent brought me to Close House. We expected a two-bedroom small cottage in the country and he brought me to Close House mansion and said ‘this is for sale, Graham’. I said, ‘really?’

I talked to the university and they said ‘we enjoy Close House, the students enjoy Close House, but it’s draining our resources. It’s not our core activity’.

I said ‘listen, as an idea, why don’t I buy it from the University? That’s my thank you and I’ll let you use it for x number of years’. So that’s how it started.

But when I got the key to the house I thought ‘what have I done?’ It was OK but not great. The golf course was OK but not great. The clubhouse was a changing facility.

There’s agricultural experiments going on in the walled garden. I thought, ‘How do I turn this into a commercial venture that actually pays its way?’

The only way of doing that was to improve the golf course. I tried that. It didn’t work. I turned the mansion house into a hotel to do weddings and dining. That didn’t work – because we couldn’t get the revenue to cover the costs. What do you do next? Build a better golf course.

Luckily, I was talking to a farmer who said ‘I’m sick of farming. I’m sick of having sheep and cattle on that field. I don’t want to do it anymore and, if you want, you can buy the land which is 200 acres’.

We bought the land from him and John Glendinning, who ran the golf course for me at the time, said he was close friends with a golf course designer who might be able to help.

Well, let’s get him to come down here and see if he could build a course on the land we were about to buy. That was Scott Macpherson.

He came down for a day, and walked around, and said ‘I can build a golf course here. It’s got all the right contours. It’ll look really good and, if you don’t mind, can I be the designer? I’ve worked with a team but I’d like to branch out on my own’.

Our initial goal was to create a Top 100 golf course and we were delighted to achieve this so quickly and become nationally respected.

So Close House is essentially where it is now because of a remarkable set of coincidences? That’s what it is and sometimes, in business, that’s what happens. Fate takes a hand, certain things happen, and you just go with it. So I ended up buying the 200 acres and ended up asking Scott to come and design the golf course. We had MJ Abbott as the contractor. It was the only golf course built that year because it was in the middle of a recession.

It was courageous to build a course in the midst of the credit crunch… It was, but I’d already bought the estate and I was trying to work out how to make it a commercial entity that would generate a profit.

I was lucky that I retired from Sage and I’d sold quite a lot of my shares. So I had the financial ability to do that without worrying about it.

I’m a keen golfer. I’m not a good golfer, but I love golf as a sport. It was my passion for building something that’s going to be great for people to come and play, and look good, while at the same time trying to work out – as a business person – how it can actually generate income.

Clearly, your association with Lee Westwood is pivotal because it gave the new course immediate profile. How did that come about? That’s a great story. At Sage, whenever we had a new building to move into we always brought in a celebrity, or somebody famous, to open it because it brings you publicity.

So I’m sitting there, with the guys that run the golf course, and I say, ‘When it’s about to be opened let’s get someone famous to open it for us and generate that PR.’

We actually talked about Nick Faldo, and at the time the Prime Minister was David Cameron and he was a golfer, and then a friend of mine said ‘Next week on Radio Two in the morning, Chris Evans is going to auction off a round of golf with the World No 1 Lee Westwood for Children in Need.’

I thought ‘That’s it!’ I’ll bid for that

and I’ll get him to open the golf course. It’s a win-win. Charity gets a lot of money and I get him to come here and open the golf course.

I woke up that morning at six. Turned the radio on at seven. Chris came on and said, ‘Great, great, auction prize this morning. We’ve got the world’s No 1 golfer, Mr Lee Westwood, and you can bid to play a round of golf with him at Sunningdale on December 12.’ I thought that was no good so I didn’t bid. I think it went for £90,000.

After that, we were a bit disappointed but Alan Shearer [a Close House member] said ‘I know Chubby [Chandler, Westwood’s then agent]. Shall I ring him and ask if he’ll do it anyway?’

Chubby said, ‘yes, Lee will do that’. He said ‘there’s one condition. Lee loves his sport. He thinks you [Shearer] are one of the best England strikers ever. Could he play with you when he opens the golf course?’

I said ‘absolutely, no problem at

Sir Graham Wylie Born in 1959, Sir Graham Wylie studied at Newcastle University and co-founded Sage Group in 1981. Hugely successful, it was listed on the FTSE 100. Wylie sold his stake in the company in 2003 and established Technology Services Group. He bought Close House from the university in 2004 and transformed it into a top 100 venue with Lee Westwood as attached tour professional. Awarded the CBE in 2003, he was knighted in 2020 for services to business and charity. His charitable foundation, the Sir Graham Wylie Foundation, has raised millions for good causes.

all’. That’s how it started.

And the two of you just clicked right away… He came here, played the golf course with Alan, and then we had dinner that night and had a couple of guest speakers in. He was meant to leave at six. His helicopter pilot came in at ten to 10 and said ‘if we don’t leave in the next ten minutes we’re not getting out of here’. So off they went.

Then I got a phone call from Chubby, about two weeks later, saying ‘Graham, do you have an attached tour professional?’

This is how naïve I was. I said ‘I’ve got no idea what that is’. He said it was a professional golfer who would promote you when he plays around the world. You can use photos to promote the golf club, put your name on his hat and get announced on the tee box.

That sounds good. Chubby said ‘Lee enjoyed his day so much with you that he would like to be your attached tour professional. And here’s the price’.

I thought ‘that’s a bit steep’. So he gave me a list of other golfers and different prices. I sat there and thought ‘don’t be so stupid Graham. He’s the world’s number one. He fits the profile perfectly’.

So I said ‘OK, I’ll go with Lee’. That was 10 years ago and he’s been here ever since. He is so much more than an attached tour professional and is now part of the fabric of the golf club. Newcastle is

now his home and he can often be found practising at the Academy or enjoying the golf courses.

Did you think it would become as extensive a partnership as it has? I knew he would be good because he’s such a great personality. He’s very approachable and he’s very professional. He likes a good laugh and when he’s playing with the members, or playing a round, he doesn’t pick up on things and he has a good game with them.

They’re nervous at first but then they’re chilled after two holes because they realise ‘I’m playing with my mates’. As a personality, he fits the club profile perfectly. But over the 10 years we’ve become more and more like friends as opposed to just a business relationship.

Your whole business career has been successful – Sage and TSG. I imagine owning a golf club is slightly different. What have you taken from your other successful enterprises that you can use here? We do run it as a business. When I put J in charge [managing director Jonathan Lupton, who took on the role in 2015], I’ve got a professional golfer who understands the business.

I don’t really understand how to run a golf club. All my life, I have delegated to people who are better than me.

I just keep J talking about the business aspects of running a golf club, as opposed to the actual running of a golf course. We have monthly forecasts. I get the sales figures every morning – on membership, how green fees are doing and F&B.

I have been simply mentoring J on how to run a golf business from a business perspective as opposed to a golf perspective.

Close House is very relaxed and is known as a really good stay and play venue. Were both of those original targets? I remember when we opened the clubhouse. On the Monday morning we got our first complaint. A member had said ‘There’s somebody in the clubhouse wearing a pair of jeans. That shouldn’t be allowed and I want you go and hunt out this person and ban them.’

John Glendinning went round and found out who was wearing a pair of jeans. It was me.

Most golfers are dressed quite well so there’s no reason to have a dress code because most people are quite sensible.

It’s quite relaxed, and the staff are very relaxed, and we just try to create a very relaxed atmosphere where people will say ‘let’s go and visit the clubhouse and have a drink’ because it’s just a nice place to go.

I got that concept from being in America quite a bit and playing golf over there. It’s very relaxed and you actually want to go, and not be terrified that you went in the wrong outfit or said the wrong things.

It’s been a difficult decade in terms of the wider economic climate. We’ve come through austerity and Covid is still here. How’s the business looking and what opportunities present themselves going forward? The good news is the business is cashflow positive and making money. I’ve achieved that objective. It’s got no bank debt. The debt in the business is the money I put in. So, from that point of view going forward, the future’s looking very bright. We don’t have to worry about finances.

With the help of J and his team, we’ve now created a business that’s cash positive and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I don’t have to worry about putting more cash in.

We can enjoy the business going forward and it’s out of intensive care. It took 10 or 12 years but we got there in the end and it’s now a very valuable asset.

How do you see the estate developing? I imagine people are always saying to you, ‘if you put half a dozen rooms in here, or if you do this to the golf course’… We have that discussion right now,

because we’re fully booked right through until October. We don’t know if that’s just because it’s the perfect storm of all the bookings from last year, having been brought forward to this year, plus this year’s bookings.

It would be good to have a normal year where we haven’t got any concerns about the pandemic, or whether people want to play abroad. If we had a normal year, and we’re still fully booked, that tells me ‘I’ve got to build some more rooms’.

You’ve raised huge sums through the Sir Graham Wylie Foundation. Can you talk a little bit about its origins? I was always donating money to charity in my Sage days but the real change came when my daughter was born with a heart defect.

She had open heart surgery at two days old. I was at the Freeman Hospital all the time and that was the thing that transformed my thoughts to say ‘I need to give back to the hospital, because they saved my daughter’s life’.

They asked me to be a patron of the Children’s Heart Unit Fund. They needed to raise

Close House Close House is home to the world’s only two Lee Westwood golf courses and is the North East’s sole PGA Academy. Twice a host of the British Masters, in 2017 and 2020, the popular stay and play venue provides 16 suite bedroom accommodation. The Colt course – designed by Scott Macpherson – is set in the beautiful Tyne Valley and was opened in 2011, while the Filly was re-designed and re-opened in 2013. quite a bit of money to build an accommodation block for parents whose kids were in the hospital but couldn’t afford to stay in the area while they were operated on.

We raised money for that. We raised money for equipment in the hospital – I think we replaced most of the equipment with new technology. Through that, the Freeman Hospital grew and grew and became more famous for doing heart transplants and heart operations.

But, through my fundraising, all my colleagues were saying ‘Graham, it’s always the one charity and we would like to donate to other charities’.

I got that and I was asked to raise money for other good causes. I decided it would be better if I had my own foundation so I could then donate to more than just the Freeman Hospital.

That’s how the Sir Graham Wylie Foundation started – so that we could help other people in the region.

But, fundamentally, I want to help children. I was lucky. I had a very humble upbringing but I had a happy upbringing. I was one of the lucky ones who had a good education and went to university and I’d like to do the same for lots of other kids in the region.

So I started the Foundation and we fundraise quite a bit every year. People then say ‘why don’t you just give them money, because you’ve got that wealth, then try and raise money for other people?’

I’ll say, what I’m doing is covering all the costs of the Foundation so every single penny that gets raised goes to good causes. It doesn’t go to admin fees and salaries and rental rates. I cover all those costs, but I’m hoping that for every pound that I put in we raise five or 10 pounds for charity and that’s what’s happening.

Going back to Close House, you don’t run it in isolation. The club is there for the members but you also try and be part of the community – particularly through F&B… I think Northumberland County Council welcome that because they want to bring tourists into the area. Why shouldn’t they? It’s a stunning place to come and visit.

It’s also from my background of just going to visit golf clubs around the world. I enjoy going to stay at the golf club, playing the golf course, and coming back again.

When I go to those golf clubs, I’m always looking for ideas as well. So the red telephone box on the 9th of the Colt course, that came from a golf course in Dallas where I was playing with my friend.

There’s an English telephone box at the end of the 8th green. We said ‘what’s that all about?’ You could order your halfway house sandwich there and by the time you got there it would be ready for you.

I thought ‘that’s a great idea’ and hence you’ve got the red telephone box on our 9th tee box.

We hope to set the standards for golf club F&B, offering restaurant quality food each and every day, including golf days and large groups.

You’ve held the British Masters twice now. Would you like a more regular European Tour event here? Yes, I’d like to keep the brand high. If we stopped doing high profile events, then I’m not sure where the brand would go.

But as long as I keep Lee here, and we’ve signed a new deal with him, if we’re talking to the European Tour about if we can hold other events in the future, I’ll always be receptive because I want to keep Close House in the conversation – in both golf magazines and on television – for golfers around the country.

Ten years on, I get the sense you are not finished yet? I’m just pleased that we’ve managed to create something that’s very special, and everyone enjoys it.

It’s great just to wander around and keep suggesting what we could do to improve the golf course or improve the whole business.

I’m hoping that this will become my legacy to the North East - that when I’m dead and buried, Close House continues to be a wellrespected, high-profile golf course.

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in 2019, and identified that the main frustrations were pace of play and how long it took to actually go around the course for 18 holes,” explains Jim Abraham, General Manager at Letchworth Golf Club, a club that has already embraced the Verifeye system. And there are a variety of issues in day-to-day golf course management which the system can address, including pace of play and course utilisation.

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How ROI is calculated with data from Verifeye Data doesn’t lie. The Verifeye system itself can prove to you your return on investment: Course utilisation – Course utilisation measures the efficient occupancy level of a golf course, in the same manner as, for example, hotel occupancy rates, or seats filled on a flight. Return on investment is measured as the percentage increase in revenue from improved course utilisation. Pace of play – Return on investment is measured by the increase in satisfaction of players at the course, reduced marshalling costs, and increased revenue. Member retention – Verifeye provides data on member playing habits, member category management, and at-risk members including predictive analytics. Return on investment is measured by the member-churn reduction.

“We identified the quiet times on the golf course and that allowed us to book visiting societies into those times, so pace of play and also access to our membership was vastly improved.” Board reporting – Verifeye can provide board members with knowledge of the golf course they never had before. Data to assess and manage: risk analysis, governance reporting and financial accuracy. Return on investment is measured by improved decision-making capabilities from the data reported. Data collection – Return on investment is measured by the enhanced value proposition from the data collected.

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