In the battle to beat an ever-ageing membership, an issue that is seriously affecting most private members' golf clubs in Scotland, Hilton Park is already a couple of holes up on most. For a start, they have reached a compromise agreement with their senior membership that has brought the fraught matter of subsidised memberships under control. They have also taken a big step towards rejuvenating the club by attracting many of the critical 20-40 age group out of the wilderness and into the fold.

The result is a membership that has increased by 233 to 1454 over the last two years and visitor numbers have more than doubled, enabling a £100,000 upgrading of the clubhouse and a £300,000 replacement of cutting equipment for their two courses.

The club, near Milngavie, is proclaimed on their website - which has been a key tool in turning the club around - to be on the edge of Rob Roy country. The current fight might be far more peaceful than the Jacobite guerilla's efforts to protect Highland values, but there is just as much passion in evolving the golfing way of life.

A pioneer, moreover, in the form of general manager Gordon Simpson, has been appointed. He is the first professional golfer in Britain to have graduated with the qualification of PGA Director of Golf and he has not been slow to brandish his broadsword of business initiatives at the old-fashioned principles behind the one-time ailing accounts.

First, the seniors issue. Even before Simpson arrived just more than two years ago there had been a concession among those who qualified for free golf through long-standing membership. They agreed to up their contribution from a fat zero to a 25% subscription.

There was also a 65-and-over membership that paid a 50% subscription and between the two categories they were totalling almost 200, with a further 90 due over the next three years and even bigger waves of prospective pensioners behind them.

Amid resignations galore from the younger ranks, the club's courses and clubhouse were crumbling just as much as the games of the ageing swingers, and despite that concession by the life members, the long-term financing of the club was recognised as being out of control. The demographic timebomb was about to blow.

The club's tsunami of seniors were alerted to the horrors of the demography before the last annual general meeting and the proposal they faced was to cap these two categories at a fixed total of 150, representing about 10% of the total membership. The breakdown of 90 paying 50% and 60 paying 25% could vary, but beyond the 150 there would have to be a waiting list.

"Although there were some questions asked by the seniors, it went through reasonably smoothly, because by that time they knew that not only were we trying to stabilise the golf club and make it go forward but also they knew they were still getting a pretty good deal in comparison to a younger guy having to pay a full fee," said Simpson.

"If things had carried on as they were it would have left the club in a poor financial position and drastic action might have had to be taken. Now we are getting to a situation where we have control of the budgets and the numbers rather than just being open-ended."

It remains the case that the younger members are subsidising the older ones, but hearteningly the crumblies showed they were open to persuasion by partly giving up what they regarded as their constitutional rights for the long-term security of the club, and there is a sweetener for those who make it to 80. They are eligible to play as much as they like for the equivalent of a clubhouse membership.

"Not only has that created movement on the waiting list, but it also gives the guys who reach that age a bit bigger of a thank you. While we understand we have taken something away from the seniors in their eyes we are also looking to give them back in one respect as well," said Simpson, who believes that subsidised memberships will be phased out altogether in time because nobody joining since 2005 has been eligible for these categories.

The Scottish Golf Union believe there are some 250,000 unattached golfers in Scotland, mostly in the missing 20-40 age group, and Hilton Park are well down the line in shepherding these players, especially with the seniors issue under control.

"Effectively, younger players had been subsidising the fees of close to 200 members who could play two, three, four and five times a week," said Simpson. "Quite probably it put a lot of them off joining. They have so many other commitments with family and work, and some are not earning so much money."

The club embarked on a campaign to make the place more attractive. Out went the rigid old rules of jacket, collar and tie. Heaven forbid, jeans and trainers are now allowed in what was once a great bastion of perceived respectability, or what others might call snobbery. "The dress code has been significantly reduced to attract more people to come with wives, girlfriends and young children," said Simpson. "Males and females can go in all three lounges and the only real segregation is for junior members, who can't go into certain lounges for licensing reasons.

"We have tried to make it more user-friendly, so that people can simply pop in, and if they are wearing jeans, that's OK, as long as they don't go on to the course in denims."

The club, furthermore, created a marketing budget for the first time and rebranded the club with a new logo. An advertising campaign was backed up by a leaflet drop, while the club's website was upgraded not only as key element of the membership drive but also to keep members updated.

Annual open days have been held in the autumn with incentives to join on that day only, a ploy that has brought 120 members in the last two years, the majority in the 25 to 40 age group. An intermediate category for the 18 to 26 age range has also been established, while packages for husband and wife and families have been introduced. "We see ourselves as a family club," said Simpson, whose arrival is the result of a committee decision that the management structure needed to change.

Simpson is in total charge of the clubhouse, courses, professional's shop and the club's 20 staff, reversing the procedure where voluntary and often ill-qualified committee members instructed employees. "That was the first step in what they saw as a way of running the golf club more like a business," he said.

"Then we had to get the courses into a state that was sellable. We had a lot of moss, there were drainage problems, the presentation wasn't at its best and at that time we were losing members hand over fist.

"The next thing we had to do was control costs. With each head of department, we looked at putting tenders out for contracts that were up for renewal and we found that there were huge savings to be made by just going out to the market place and negotiating.

"I think in golf clubs you get friendly with certain suppliers and you just roll with them for years. The club had fallen into a rut and we had to get out of that rut."

That rut has clearly gone. Improved conditions are testimony to that, and probably most important of all, the seniors can look their fellow members in the eye and enjoy mutual respect.