The Fairmont Southampton's golf course has been struggling for years and radical action is needed to make it profitable.

That was the main message from Fairmont Hotels officials on Thursday night when they met with golf club members and nearby residents to discuss controversial plans to build 145 luxury villas on the property ? a project scheduled to begin in about two years.

To accommodate the new units, Fairmont are intent on reducing the par-three, 18-hole course by half, as well as building a short game academy.

It was also revealed at the meeting that the hotel chain have entered into preliminary negotiations with world famous short game guru Dave Pelz ? with the ultimate ambition of incorporating the short game academy into his high-profile franchise.

And while club president Paul Cashin admitted yesterday that he would rather things were left as they were, he admitted the golf course has been a financial liability for some time.

"The first thing they said to us at the meeting was that tourists are simply not coming to the hotel to play golf," he said.

"They may well play a round or two when they're here, but in general the golf course is not a significant attraction for guests. And given that we do not have enough members to fill the course, it is not doing well at all and hasn't been for a while.

"They have been very open and honest about their intentions so far and they have promised to meet with us a few more times. The people who live on the borders of the property obviously have different priorities to us, and they made those clear at the meeting.

"But from our perspective we would like things to remain how they are, but it is difficult to mount much of a case when confronted with the raw economics of the situation.

"My feeling is that they want to be as accommodating and helpful as possible, but at the end of the day they have a hotel to run and shareholders and staff to keep happy.

"In order to remain competitive in the market, as they said, they cannot have a golf course sitting there which is not making any money and they are convinced that their plan is the best way forward."

How the new nine-hole course will be configured is not yet known, while Cashin said he is hopeful of persuading hotel bosses to incorporate a member's clubhouse into the construction plans.

"Unlike every other club we have never had a club house that we can call our own," he said.

"Over the course of the next few meetings with them I will certainly see if it is possible for them to provide some sort of facility which we can use. At the moment we have nowhere to display our trophies or anything like that and it would be nice, seeing as how they're planning on making all these changes, if they could also provide us with somewhere to base ourselves, separate from the academy."