From Mr W. Cunningham

I am sure that my good friend Charles Flores is more than capable of replying to Mr A. Bonello without any help from me. However, as one of the Scots that Charles referred to in his original article, I hope you will allow me the space to correct some of the fallacies that Mr Bonello spread as he let his enthusiasm for golf build a firewall between his thinking and reality.

Mr Bonello is, of course, right in his assertion that golfers in general compete against the course not other golfers (apart from match play – but that’s another story). But does he really believe that Malta having two courses as opposed to one will attract sufficient numbers of the type of tourist Malta needs to justify the huge financial investment and the other social and civic costs that will be required? Serious golfers, the men and women who spend a lot of money on golfing holidays – presumably the people Malta wants to bring here – are no more interested in two courses than they are in one. On a two-week golfing holiday, they want to play nine or 10 different courses.

As a golfing enthusiast, Mr Bonello probably watched Melita’s excellent coverage of The Open Championship from St Andrew’s in Scotland over the weekend. I hope he did – and I hope members of the Maltese government did as well. Because that’s your competition, ladies and gentlemen. As I write this letter on Monday morning, tourists and other visitors to Scotland will already be playing over the Old Course where, only yesterday, the likes of Tiger Woods, Colin Montgomerie and Retief Goosens were showing golf at its highest level. They will be playing, not only at St Andrew’s, but on the scores of other championship standard courses in that part of the world. If Mr Bonello was listening as well as watching, he will have heard the commentators refer on several occasions to a part of East Lothian (just across the Firth of Forth) where on one 25-mile stretch of road, you will pass no fewer than 25 golf courses!

Some will no doubt argue that Malta offers a much better climate than Scotland. True, it rains a lot in Scotland, which is rather good for golf courses: St Andrew’s, for example, needs no irrigation system – a major issue for Malta to consider. If you do happen to worry about the weather, you can always get a good package to Spain or Portugal – always assuming their courses survive this summer’s drought (caused, at least in part by the amount of water these countries have lavished on their golf) or you can get more exotic and get an all-inclusive golfing trip to California or Florida... both packages costing not a lot more than Air Malta’s return fare to Glasgow or Manchester.

So, if Malta fails to attract the specialist golfing holiday market, what sort of tourist might the island attract? You will certainly catch the attention of the laddish booze cruisers who enjoy long weekends of sun, sin, sea and a little golf. You could find Malta playing host to more of the cheap and cheerful family packages where Dad is an occasional weekend “hacker”. But, before these groups move their holidays to Malta in preference to their established haunts, they will demand more than another golf course. They will demand more, and noisier, nightclubs where the entertainment specialises in strippers and pole-dancers and the like. Mothers and daughters will expect places where they can sunbathe, if not totally naked, then certainly topless. Is Malta prepared to concede its long-established opposition to such activities simply to attract a few more tourists?

If Malta wants to become another Faliraki, why not just invite Club Med over?

One final point: I notice that one issue Mr Bonello did not quibble about was the number of years it would take between a golf course being built here and its becoming prepared enough and established enough for even weekend hackers to risk their clubs on.

Could it be that this argument is simply unanswerable?

Wylie Cunningham