How better to illustrate the changing face of golf than review the development of Cowdray Park that celebrates its centenary next year?

Fifty years ago the men's sub was five guineas. Today, even if you could leapfrog the waiting list, the equivalent figure is £750 plus a £1,000 one-off joining fee.

This applies to both sexes when, in the Fifties, there was no such thing as equality among men and women in golf clubs.

What it now costs to join Cowdray represents good value for the club has come up in the world following the opening last summer of a spanking new £1.5m clubhouse and vastly improved 18 holes.

The course has always been pretty but now it is not only pleasing to the eye but in immaculate condition.

Investment totalling £200,000 in new equipment has allowed head greenkeeper Jonathan Smith and his staff to put Cowdray on the map so that it may almost be spoken of in the same breath as exclusive West Sussex at Pulborough.

Purists may say that is stretching a point but the transformation in Cowdray has to be seen to be believed. The signs were there for all to see two years ago when the Sussex PGU voted it the best presented course in the county. Since then the splendid clubhouse has been completed and awaits a formal opening by estate owner Viscount Cowdray this spring.

Next year, to mark the centenary, Cowdray will host the Sussex Amateur Championship for the first time in 94 years. Also on the fixture list is the Southern Professional Championship for a third successive year and negotiations are in progress for a ladies' pro-am.

The plush five-star clubhouse interior is another planet compared to what members called home for half a century and before that. What Cowdray now has to offer must pull greater society business and an additional attraction is the recently opened luxury self-catering holiday cottages on the boundaries of the course next to Benbow pond.

Next year, joint promotions are planned with Cowdray Park Polo club for the ultimate sporting day; golf in the morning and world class polo in the afternoon and lashings of hospitality.

It is all possible, of course, because the 17,000-acre estate is owned by Viscount Cowdray who hosts the Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup, Europe's main polo event.

Under his aegis Cowdray is a proprietory club with the 550 members coming first. Unlike some other owner-driven ventures in Sussex, Cowdray has a success story to tell. Where else in these parts on a wet Tuesday in February would you find the car park full and a fair number of the 120 lady members engaged in competition?

Less well-sited courses not on easy-draining red sand like Cowdray, all to often display the no play signs at this time of year and continue to leak money at an alarming rate.

There are no fewer than 16 full time staff under managing director Phil Stevens who runs similar operations at Hamptworth Golf and Country club in Wiltshire and Salisbury Golf Centre.