Don't reckon I can rightly say when I heard it first - or who had got the ball rolling by saying it, come to that - but it went along the lines of "Football's not just as important than life or death; it's way more important than that". See, if you ask me, that's something I'd go right along with, just providing you're saying it about golf!
And the fact is, with everything we've got going for the golf industry across our islands at this present time, I reckon I'm not the only one thinking that way out here.
Seems like developments are coming from almost every angle. With top course designers from all over the world, including Tom Weiskopf (who I'm sure you'll agree, has done some of his finest work at my own club, Paradise Island's One&Only Ocean Club), Robert Trent Jones Jr., Dick Wilson and Fred Settle Jr., along with big name players like Greg Norman, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, all pitching in with their ideas for new courses. With entrepreneurs investing their dollars to get new clubs opened up almost as regular as our greens are tended. With growing numbers of local's, young and old, men and women, taking up the game. And with more and more visiting players packing their clubs up and flying them into The Bahamas with them.
Not that it's such a great surprise to me. We've got some of the finest scenery a person ever could hope to see on view from every fairway from the Exumas to Grand Bahama Island. Our tropical climate lets us play 365 days a year. We're home to some of the trickiest championship courses in the Caribbean. And we've got a whole country full of people more than happy to welcome golfing guests. Which makes it real easy to see why the sport is such a big thing on our islands. And getting bigger all the time.
You'll understand then that getting to be the first Bahamian Golf Operations Manager here at The One&Only was one of the proudest days of my life. Even better than getting my handicap down to 7.
Lloyd Jones, Golf Operations Manager and 7-handicap player - Paradise Island
