Founder members of the Oxfordshire Golf Club, which has gone into liquidation, will lose up to £22,500 each as the company is wound up.

The club at Milton Common, near Thame, now has a secure future after being bought by Leaderboard Golf.

Its previous owners -- two Japanese companies called Nitto Albion and Nitto (Oxfordshire) -- ran a "debenture" system under which its 480 members paid up to £30,000 each as an unsecured loan to the club.

They will get up to £7,500 of their money back from the joint administrators, Alan Bloom and Alan Lovett. Other creditors will get about 25p for every pound they are owed.

The two companies had assets of £8m and owed £29.3m to creditors -- a shortfall of £21.3m.

The debenture holders also paid £2,000 a year in fees for seven-day membership of the world-class course, which hosted the Benson and Hedges International Open from 1996 to 1999.

They had the right to surrender their debentures for 90 per cent of their cash value after ten years.

The course was built in 1993, but the business was wound up after an audit showed it would become insolvent if founder members started to exercise their rights next year to get 90 per cent of their money back.

All 55 staff were kept on by Leaderboard, which owns other top golf clubs.

Oxfordshire Golf Club operations manager Richard Moan said the club had now scrapped the debenture system in favour of a £3,500 joining fee.

"The debenture system does not seem to work in this country -- we are so used to a joining fee."

He said about 70 per cent of debenture holders had rejoined the club.