When Peter Banks joined Rudding Park in 1996 a year after the Hawtree-designed golf course opened for play, he intended to stay no longer than three years. With golf at Rudding Park celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Banks never did quite manage to prise himself away from North Yorkshire.

Set in 300 acres of landscaped gardens and woodlands, Rudding Park in Harrogate features a boutique hotel with 90 bedrooms and suites; a 14-seat private cinema; a new state-of-the art spa and two eateries – the Clocktower Restaurant and Bar – and Horto (latin for kitchen garden) which offers contemporary fine dining and boasts three AA Rosettes.

Home of the 2019 Toro greenkeeper of the year, Jason Norwood, the golf course is evidently in safe hands, with Norwood and head greenkeeper Richard Hollingworth responsible for the 18-hole main Hawtree Course, and the six-hole, par 3, Repton Short Course which features a hole inspired by the world-famous 17th at Sawgrass.

Opened in 2008, the Repton Short Course was a personal triumph for Banks, who had been instrumental in its concept and planning. “I came up with the idea for the Repton Course in 2002 on the touchline of an under-eight’s football match when one of my friends said: ‘you need a short course’,” he recalls.

“We talked about it, went around a few short courses in the country, spoke to Martin [Hawtree] and walked around the land we had in mind. Martin came up and I told him I didn’t want it to be a pitch-and-putt and that we needed this to be our signature, so people go, ‘wow’ and remember it.”

And that attention to detail coupled with a tenacious approach to business, perhaps explains why Banks is now managing director of Rudding Park. Drafted in originally to oversee the opening of the hotel, Banks, 51, is now responsible for the entire operation – including golf – and just spending a few moments in his company, it’s evident that this is where his passion lies despite having a background in hotel management.

“I came to open the hotel, as you don’t often get a chance to do an opening, especially an opening for a private business that isn’t run by a hotelier. It was literally a blank piece of paper for me so I could just come in and do the hotel as I saw it. It was a great opportunity.

“I wanted to get an opening on my cv and came up here, thought I was going to be here for three years and then move on.”

During his 24-year tenure, Banks who describes himself as “a golfer by hobby; hotelier by necessity,” has shaped Rudding Park in his own image, and spent £10 million on building a new spa which opened in May 2017 and a further £1 million on improving the golf academy. And there may be future investment on the horizon too.

“Last year we built two new holes,” added Banks. “We’ve got planning permission for an additional nine holes and to crystallize that planning permission, we needed to get cracking and do something. So, we built two holes, but only play them as part of a ten-hole loop, and probably spent a further £150,000 [building them].”

The ‘missing’ seven holes, to complete a 27-hole layout, may have to wait though, as Banks feels that golf has wider issues to resolve first before he can commit to further investment.

“Golf is really struggling and it’s struggling because golf as a game was designed for a different age. It’s a fantastic game, it’s never ever going to go out of fashion because it pushes the same buttons in our brains, I believe, as gambling does.

“If we got par on every single hole – unlikely as it may sound for me – and we went around and there was no, ‘Bloody hell, that’s why I play this game’ moment, then there’s nothing to get you back. And that’s why gamblers do it as well. If gamblers win every time, they wouldn’t gamble.

“So golf in itself will never lose its allure, but the problem we’ve got is that it was designed at a time-rich age, and as we all know now, we are time-poor at a certain age so actually as a golf industry, we need to understand that and adapt.

“Twenty years ago, once men had stopped playing football or rugby, they still wanted to compete and so they then gravitated from competitive contact sport at 30, 35 or something, to golf.

And so, the golf course was full of 35-year-old blokes having a bat and trying to beat each other, exactly the same way as they used to when they were playing football or rugby.

“Unfortunately for golf, we’ve now become time poorer. And I blame mobile phones – there’s instant gratification.

“And of course, along came cycling and cycling has absolutely torpedoed that 35 to 50-year-old male golfing market. It attracts the same sort of people; it attracts people who want to compete but can’t do contact sport. It attracts people who are a little bit geeky about their kit, so instead of carrying a Vokey wedge, they’ve got carbon fibre gears.

“Unfortunately for golf, what cycling also is, that golf isn’t, is an awful lot more approachable and actually accessible.

“By that I don’t necessarily mean that part of it is the whole stuffiness issue, but anyone can ride a bike. Once you’ve got the kit, you just get on your bike and then go for a ride.

“I don’t have to ring my mate to have a game with them; I don’t have to ring the club to reserve a tee time. None of those barriers are there for cycling. I’ve lost quite a lot of corporate golf days because they now do corporate cycling days.”

Yet despite pressure from the lycra brigade, Banks is of the opinion that golf will always trump cycling when it comes to club membership, especially with the over 50s.

“It’s not a fluke that the average age at golf clubs is increasing, because people who’ve retired have the time to play the game and probably actually don’t have the knees or hips to go cycling anymore,” he smiles. “And people are retiring earlier now of course.”

A couple of years back, Banks was quoted as saying that he wanted to develop Rudding Park into the “Gleneagles of the north of England,” a statement which he is keen to qualify.

“When I said the Gleneagles of the north of England, I didn’t necessarily mean purely from the golf perspective, I meant from the resort perspective. And golf is one offering within that resort – Gleneagles isn’t just a golf destination.”

And neither is Rudding Park. Voted Hotel of the Year at the annual VisitEngland Awards for Excellence in 2018; Best Fine Dining Restaurant in the Yorkshire Evening Post Oliver Awards 2018; and Spa of the Year at the annual AA Hospitality Awards in 2019, Rudding Park has a lot to offer.

“So, in answer to the question, the golf needs to be a good test, and I would say that I think we have the best test of modern golf in the Harrogate area,” stated Banks, who has crafted Rudding Park into one of the finest resorts in the north of England, if not the UK.

Not bad for someone who only planned to stay for a few years.