The Good-Good Golf Podcast · TalkinGolf Productions

Ep 151: Mike Clayton On UK Golf (from Hoylake)

·1 hr 14 min·3 clips

Rod Murray starts with the very real problem of following the Open Championship from afar when it lands in the middle of the night. The early focus is Royal Liverpool, along with the noise already building around the new par 3 17th. From there, the conversation opens out fast. Mike Clayton is presented as someone who has spent time around the UK golf scene and seen the pilgrimage up close. The show treats that part of the world as more than a tournament backdrop. It becomes a place where golf sits inside culture, travel, and the pull of being there. The panel also has a fresh voice in the chairing mix, with Adrian Logue out because of work and injury. Jimmy Emanuel steps in, and the banter wastes no time putting him on the spot. That lighter teasing sits beside the episode's more serious thread. The guests and hosts talk through golf's habit of becoming an easy target. They note how quickly critics reach for the same familiar lines whenever golf courses come under pressure. The discussion settles on what should happen to golf courses that no longer make sense as golf courses. One argument raised is that some clubs are small, unprofitable, and stuck with land they cannot easily turn into anything else. Another is that if a site really is better suited to housing or some other use, people should say so plainly instead of pretending every course can be preserved forever. The panel keeps pushing on the tension between private ownership, local value, and public criticism. It never lets the conversation drift into slogans. The episode brings in the environmental angle too, without pretending it is simple. Golf courses can be blamed for land use, tree removal, or space that might be used differently. At the same time, the discussion pushes back on the idea that the answer is always to bulldoze courses and build houses. UK golf is described as part of local economies, not just a sporting hobby with bad optics. Tourism matters. Money comes in. Towns with strong golf offerings can do well. That point is carried beyond the UK as well. The show suggests the same logic applies in parts of Australia, where golf can help support local activity. The tone stays conversational and blunt rather than polished or academic. People interrupt, poke holes, and keep returning to the same core idea from different angles. The result feels more like serious thinking aloud than a packaged opinion segment. The Open itself stays in the background throughout, mostly as the trigger rather than the full subject. The real topic is why golf in the UK carries weight beyond one week in July. The episode makes the case that the game there has history, tourism value, and a social role that people miss when they only see land and housing pressure. It also leaves room for the messiness of that argument. Nothing is neat. That is part of the point. Clayton's presence gives the whole thing a sharper edge because he has context and is willing to stay in the weeds. The panel does not flatten his points into generic praise. It keeps asking what follows from them. That gives the episode its shape. It moves from tournament chatter to course politics to the real economics of keeping golf alive in places where it is no longer easy to justify. The conversation is funny in places, blunt in others, and always more interested in the actual game than in the easiest version of the argument.

As heard by us

A sharp, grounded look at UK golf, land use, and why the game still has a case.

Mike Clayton joins the conversation just as the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool turns into a late-night watch, and the episode settles into a clear case for golf in the UK.

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Why you'd press play

You want the Open, but you also want the bigger argument underneath it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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