New chair Eleanor Cannon has big plans for Scottish Golf

by Jim Black

It’s unclear exactly what approach Eleanor Cannon will adopt in her role as chair of Scottish Golf – the brand new unified governing body for the amateur game.

The blond power-dressing 50-year-old former captain of industry neatly sidestepped a direct answer to my question: “Will it be the iron fist or the velvet glove?”

But, initially at least, Cannon has no plans to crack the whip as she deliberates over the composition of the eight-strong board of non-executive directors she will oversee.

“This new board is about getting their arms around the clubs,” she said. “We are in it to enable, not to direct.

“The core of the game in Scotland is having successful clubs and that will only happen if they are shown support.”

The new organisation to replace the Scottish Golf Union – formed in 1920 – and the Scottish Ladies Golf Association – founded in 1904 – officially came into being at St Andrews on October 1, with the board having the principal aim of championing and growing the game in Scotland.

It was perhaps appropriate that the historic occasion was marked by the release of 607 balloons from the West Sands beach – setting for the introductory scenes from Chariots Of Fire – representing the number of affiliated clubs, for Cannon has been a high flier for much of her career.

But, with apologies to C.J of Reginald Perrin fame, Cannon hasn’t got where she is today without maximising her opportunities by taking into account the best ideas of others.

That is why she was keen to stress her desire to work closely with the professional arm of the game, the PGA in Scotland, now being led by another female, Shona Malcolm.

“Collaboration is the key,” she pointed out. “One of the significant contributors in a club is the professional and that means we have to work well with the PGA and share the same targets.”

There are also lessons to be learned from other sports.

“Every sport in Scotland is facing membership challenges,” she conceded. “There is a lot that we can share with other sports and this is a conversation I’m having with lots of people.

“We tend to forget that golf is the largest participation sport in Scotland, but it is all about collaboration, and there are facilities we can share in communities.

“The fact is all of us face similar challenges, so you have to ask, ‘how can you work collaboratively in sport?’, because we all want to grow our sports.”

A St Andrews University graduate, Cannon has faced many challenges in the business world, including high profile roles with Scottish & Newcastle and Tesco.

But she is relishing being at the sharp end of a sport that has been part of her life for as long as she can remember. And she is keen to stress the importance of strong leadership in trying to transform any organisation.

“Golf has been very much part of my daily routine,” she explained. “My dad, my mum and my brother all played and I decided that if you can’t beat them, join them. But I thought about this challenge long and hard.

“I’ve come in feeling humbled to be asked and blown away by the amount of work done already that I wasn’t aware of at all.

“But I really don’t know about the past. I’ve got to focus on the future and if I was bringing baggage in I wouldn’t be doing the game any justice.

“There’s also a similarity between the challenges facing Scottish golf and the one faced by the Scottish beer industry at the turn of the century in terms of attracting female drinkers to drink cider and beer.

“Fourteen percent of our members are women – and women by and large make the decisions in family life – and I think it’s about communicating the wonderful values of the game and the discipline it instils.

“It’s a great sport and youngsters are in a safe environment, learning a game that will stay with them for life. It’s about communicating that to non-golfers, and that’s a fantastic challenge I am genuinely looking forward to.”

But Cannon stressed that the clubs must also play their part in responding to the changing age and embrace the opportunities that will inevitably arise from amalgamation.

“Some fantastic work has been done across clubs in the last five or six years and we should applaud the strong ones and share best practices, so that others can learn from them,” she said.

Cannon is encouraged by the fact that some clubs are already staging mixed medals in her efforts to attract sponsors.

Aberdeen Asset Management is already on-board and Cannon believes others will follow once the new board is in place.

She added: “They will have the challenge of bringing their experience to see how we are going to do this and I’ve met a great deal of incredibly talented, motivated and experienced people who really want to play a part in this.

“The first job of the board is to define the structure that will underpin the new organisation and I’m keen to confirm that board in the next couple of weeks and then allow the new board to make the strategy their own.

“Most importantly, how do we build stronger clubs and increase participation? Key to that will be communicating with the clubs in a modern and dynamic way.”

*This article was originally published in TGP on 7 October 2015

Tagged Eleanor Cannon, Scottish golf