The Shropshire - Member's Newsletter (Aug/Sept 23)

AN UPDATE FROM...

Stuart Perry General Manager

Dear members, Just a little update on what’s been happening behind the scenes at the club these past few months.

TrackMan Range

So we finally opened our TrackMan Range on 1st July for our members VIP weekend. It was fantastically supported so thank you for coming along. The first month has been a huge success. We had nearly 4,000 bookings made and over 400,000 balls hit!

We have activated you all a Your Golf Booking member status so once you create your account with them using the same tee booking email, it will automatically give you the additional 10% credit each time you top up your account. This credit can be used on both range bookings and food and beverage items at the range.

We will have lots of competitions and events for members as we develop the offering and find our feet with the system so watch this

space. With the new booking system we weren’t able to implement the free £5 session credit but are still looking to bring something in for you when we can.

Course Projects

Well to say it’s mid-summer, it certainly feels more like April showers these past few months which has played havoc with course upkeep. This time last year we had heatwaves!

Ivan and the team have been working as hard as possible to keep on top of the growing conditions - mild and wet weather creates a perfect storm for growth. At times we have had to add an additional weekly cutting rotation.

This month we have had to start some greens maintenance to alleviate the compaction and to aid drainage by earthquaking the greens. They should recover very quickly given the conditions. We have sprayed and fertilised so that also means we have had to raise the cutting height slightly to make this as effective as possible.

We appreciate some of the comments regarding the bunkers but these have been near on impossible to maintain given the conditions. With heavy rain almost every other day a lot of our hard work just gets washed away. Please can I remind all members to rake footprints once you have played your shot. 95% of rounds of golf are member rounds so it’s impossible that the footprints/pitch marks etc. are caused solely by the 5% of non-members. We are going to look at potentially removing some bunkers and reducing the size of others

as we try to find a workable balance for maintenance given the weather conditions we are facing, availability of sand becoming more difficult and costly, and the soil type (clay) that we have which contaminates the sand through washdown.

We have received some good news that the fairway mower we ordered back in Feb 2022 is possibly arriving in the next couple of weeks. The lead times now on course machinery are almost two years which again is causing a huge headache and we are working on a scheme to forward plan investment to deal with these lead times.

Course Rating Update

Hopefully you will have noticed the new permanent tee plaques that have been installed. This is to identify the location that each tee colour is officially measured from. We have also had the course re-measured and the final stage will be having the county rating team come out and re-rate the difficulty of the course which will hopefully happen in September. This may change our WHS information and once we know more, we will keep you informed. In addition this time round, we are having the yellow tees rated for ladies and the red tees rated for men.

F&B Update

We have taken the decision to try some new brands in both the range bar and main clubhouse to freshen up our offerings for you:

• Fosters replaced with Heineken Silver

• John Smiths replaced with Beavertown Neck Oil

• Heineken replaced with Cruz Campo

Feedback so far has been very positive, and I know our President will smile again eventually. Cruz Campo is a very nice drop I can highly recommend it.

On the food side of things, the increasing supplier costs are proving very difficult to manage and we are having to pass some of these onto customers/members unfortunately. At one point this year food inflation was at 24%. Just on some simple essential items we have seen almost 50% price increases. I’m sure you have found the same on your weekly shop, but we will continue to do our best for you on the specials boards.

Staff/People Update

Congratulations to Paul “Bomber” Richards from the greenkeeping team who was our employee of Q2. What was fantastic about this, was that other departments had made his nomination. They don’t necessarily see all that the greenkeepers have to do for us. Paul played a huge role in the outfield works for the driving range and without his hard work and dedication it would have not been possible.

We are on the hunt for good quality staff as Range Hosts and F&B team members so if you have anyone/know anyone looking for employment please let us know.

We are also looking for a full-time mechanic for the greenkeeping team and are pleased to have already recruited a part-time cleaner to bring the cleaning of the venue back in-house from our previous contract.

Back in July is was great for me and the team to host and welcome the senior management team from BGL and all other nine golf General Managers to The Shropshire for a two day conference. First time in 12 years! Feedback from them was fantastic and such positive comments from them on how friendly the team are, how well they were looked after, how friendly the members are, and how good the course condition was - it means a lot.

Sustainability Update

As a business I’m please to inform you that 99.75% of our waste is diverted from landfill. We do separate food waste, cardboard, and glass from general waste here at site level but all of our waste does also go through a separation process with our supplier.

We are already accredited to GEO (Golf Environment Organisation) and our aim is to become even more sustainable in the future. We are already looking at various initiatives that we can introduce hopefully with your help to continue working towards this. BGL is also heavily investing in sustainability projects and reviewing our supply chain on how sustainable that process is currently.

Our wash pad waste to water system for the greenkeeping equipment has been fully installed so we can make sure any oils/fluids don’t make their way into the local water course and any water used is fully recycled.

In terms of our irrigation system this is all non-mains water and used primarily from our irrigation ponds and the borehole.

We had to clear out some of the scrub, dead, and self settling trees between the clubhouse

and range. These have been offset by the additional planting we did at the back end of last year when the local council funded 600 additional trees for us.

I’ve recently been given the book by our CEO Colin Mayes “A life on our planet” written by David Attenborough and it makes for an incredible read on our changing planet and our responsibility to do what we can. I can highly recommend it.

Finally, I hope you enjoy what is left of the summer holidays, and any trips you have planned to lovely parts of the world. We can’t wait to see you all back at the club very soon.

Best Regards

Stuart

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