THE GOLF CLUB
MANAGER ISSUE 11 | FEBRUARY 2018
THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE GOLF CLUB MANAGERS’ ASSOCIATION
GCMA
VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDE
W H AT T H E I N D U S T RY THINKS OF GOLF CLUB MANAGERS AND THE GCMA EDUCATION
CASHING IN ON SOCIAL MEDIA H O W FAC E B O O K C A N B R I N G REVENUE INTO YOUR CLUB INTERVIEW
NICHOLAS AMOAH SPREADING THE WORD OF THE GCMA IN GHANA
ED U C AT E | I N FO RM | I N S P I RE ‘
GCMA 2018 DATES FOR YOUR DIARY GCMA AGM
INCLUDING THE CHANCE TO PLAY FOR THE CAPTAIN’S CUP
MONDAY 16 APRIL | MOOR PARK GC
NATIONAL GOLF DAY
MONDAY 18 JUNE | BROADSTONE GC
Visit gcma.org.uk/diary to view the full calendar of 2018 events Entry for the AGM and National Golf Day will open shortly
EDUCATE | INFORM | INSPIRE
GCMA.ORG.UK | 3
CONTENTS ISSUE 11 | FEBRUARY 2018
GCMA
CAREERS
06
The latest from the chief executive
34
12
Meet Northern regional manager Terry Minett
The latest jobs for GCMA members
INDUSTRY
EDUCATION
18
40
How to....get the best possible course pictures
48
Why you should use social media for marketing
Keeping you In the Loop
INTERVIEWS
REGIONAL
28
63
All the latest from the GCMA regions
64
My success story: Newmachar’s Mike Timson
Nicholas Amoah on golf in Ghana
40
28 48
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THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE GOLF CLUB MANAGERS’ ASSOCIATION GCMA Bristol & Clifton Golf Club, Beggar Bush Lane, Failand, Bristol, BS8 3TH Tel: 01275 391153 | hq@gcma.org.uk CHIEF EXECUTIVE Bob Williams - bob@gcma.org.uk COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Mike Hyde - mike@gcma.org.uk GOLF MANAGEMENT RESEARCHER Jim Cunning - jim@gcma.org.uk EDUCATION COORDINATOR Niki Hunter - niki@gcma.org.uk MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY Ann Jones - ann@gcma.org.uk EDUCATION AND MAGAZINE ADMINISTRATOR Debbie Mereweather - debbie@gcma.org.uk FINANCE ADMINISTRATOR Shirley Edmondson - shirley@gcma.org.uk BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Tash Johnson - tash@gcma.org.uk COMMUNICATIONS EXECUTIVE Marie Taylor - marie@gcma.org.uk PRESIDENT JR (John) Jones 2017/18 CAPTAIN Howard Williams BOARD OF DIRECTORS Mike Hoare, Gary Steele, Phil Grice, Eddie Bullock THE GOLF CLUB MANAGER IS PUBLISHED BY: SPORTS PUBLICATIONS LTD 2 Arena Park, Tarn Lane, Scarcroft, West Yorkshire, LS17 9BF, UK Tel: 0113 289 3979 | info@sportspub.co.uk PUBLISHER Tom Irwin - t.irwin@sportspub.co.uk EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Dan Murphy - d.murphy@sportspub.co.uk OPS DIRECTOR Will Shucksmith - w.shucksmith@sportspub.co.uk EDITOR Steve Carroll - s.carroll@sportspub.co.uk CHIEF DESIGNER Andrew Kenworthy - a.kenworthy@sportspub.co.uk DESIGNERS Vicky Jones - v.jones@sportspub.co.uk Emmi Parry - e.parry@sportspub.co.uk Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, but the publishers cannot accept responsibility for omissions and errors. All material in this publication is strictly copyright and all rights are reserved.The views expressed in The Golf Club Manager do not necessarily represent the views of the company or the editor. Every care is taken in compiling the contents but the publishers assume no responsibility for any damage, loss or injury arising from participation in any offer, competition or advertising contained within The Golf Club Manager. THE GOLF CLUB
MANAGER ISSUE 11 | FEBRUARY 2018
THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE GOLF CLUB MANAGERS’ ASSOCIATION
GCMA
VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDE
W H AT T H E I N D U S T RY THINKS OF GOLF CLUB MANAGERS AND THE GCMA EDUCATION
CASHING IN ON SOCIAL MEDIA H O W FAC E B O O K C A N B R I N G REVENUE INTO YOUR CLUB INTERVIEW
NICHOLAS AMOAH SPREADING THE WORD OF THE GCMA IN GHANA
ED U C AT E | I N FO RM | I N S P I RE ‘
001 GCMA February 18 Cover.indd 3
30/01/2018 16:16
ON THE COVER: Nicholas Amoah Nicholas Amoah images: Kate Jackson Photography
WELCOME
ISSUE 11 | FEBRUARY 2018
A
s spring approaches, hopefully some of you are beginning to see some green shoots of growth on the golf course. With the winter work schedule completed, I think February marks the end of the winter months. For those who had greenkeepers attend BTME in Harrogate, I can only surmise they have come back fully motivated and ready to start preparing your course for the season ahead. The GCMA team were at BTME, initially running a three-day management training course and then manning our stand as part of the exhibition. It proved to be a most successful event and one I still maintain should be attended by GCMA members. For 2019, BIGGA are expanding the exhibition and their excellent educational programme It is certainly worth your greenkeepers attending or even taking a day or two out to make a visit yourself. Looking ahead, we are piloting two exploratory meetings for the Women’s Golf Leadership Group, which is aimed at providing a platform for both lady golf club managers and those from associated industries to share best practice and compare common experiences. Over the last year or so we have seen the development of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Golf. The first meeting this year was held last month where Martin Slumbers delivered his vision for The R&A. All meetings are held at Westminster
with the next one in March. The APPG have a common purpose to discuss issues important to the sport and hear from those within the game. The group is open to Individuals and clubs, who may join the group as associate members and participate in the meetings to help Parliamentarians support the game of golf. If you live within commuting distance of Westminster, the meetings provide a good opportunity to network and meet with industry colleagues. Finally, this is the time of the year we start to look forward to spring and summer and, of course, The Masters. Winter is nearly over! Bob Williams – chief executive
“(BTME) proved to be a most successful event and one I still maintain should be attended by GCMA members. For 2019, BIGGA are expanding the exhibition“
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What you
NEED TO KNOW Relevant news, opinion and expert insight from around the industry. Plus what’s happening around the UK in the world of the GCMA
GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
The month in
PICTURES
1
The 93rd Principles of Golf Club Management course was held during the BIGGA Turf Management Exhibition, in Harrogate, last month. The course, formerly known as the Introduction to Golf Club
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Management, brought a number of interested students together, from all different sectors of the golf industry. Read what three of the delegates had to say in this month’s A Matter of Opinion on page 20.
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2
The GCMA was delighted to support the 2018 Golf Environment Awards, presented during BTME. Operation Pollinator was awarded to Kingsdown, where Tom Freeman had introduced
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extensive wildflower areas with the help of local primary schoolchildren. Not only did this project provide for nectar and pollen loving insects, it also provided a great golf education to the younger generation.
3
Departing Southern regional manager Joan Raffety was given a rousing farewell by members at their regional meeting at Littlehampton. She was presented with a number of gifts, including some flowers from GCMA national captain Howard Williams.
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GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
Meet the
GCMA Giving a voice to the people behind the scenes who help to run your Golf Club Managers’ Association
W
hat is your role? My role as regional manager is to organise regional business meetings, matches and events, to promote the GCMA in the area, and to represent the region at national level and to control the regions finances. I also act as a conduit for regional cross club support. There is no average day, but if there are no meetings, matches or national events to attend I will spend about an hour a day in my office on GCMA related work. How did you become involved with the GCMA? I first got involved in golf club management 13 years ago after a varied career in the corporate world. Joining and being involved in the GCMA, or the Association of Golf Club Secretaries as it was then, was a no-brainer. I wanted support and to share experiences and best practice with other managers regionally and nationally. What do you enjoy most about
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your role? After retiring from club management, I enjoy managing the region because it keeps me involved in golf management regionally and nationally. Over the years I have made many friends throughout the GCMA and I enjoy that continued contact.
“The GCMA must continue to strive to be the number one support organisation”
Close House
How has the association changed since you first become involved? At my first AGM as the national executive representative for the Northern region, the association ratified the change of name from
Terry Minett - is regional manager for GCMA Northern region
AGCS to GCMA and we have moved forward year on year. Recognition of the GCMA in the golf industry has improved no end, but the GCMA must continue to strive to be the number one support organisation for golf club managers. What opportunities lie ahead for the GCMA? Education at every level is paramount and as someone once said “better golf club managers make better golf clubs”. Every golfer will know of The R&A, PGA and England Golf and I believe the GCMA must endeavour to achieve this recognition and status. I consider greater understanding and appreciation of the key role of the GCMA by all golf club members is vital to continued growth of the association. What has been a recent golfing highlight? The British Masters was held in the region at Close House last September. Well done to both Jonathan Greenwood and Jonathan Lupton for bringing the event to the North East and making it a great success.
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GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
Captain’s corner
HOWARD WILLIAMS
I
spent three days in Harrogate with members of the GCMA team at the BIGGA Turf Management Exhibition in January – on the back of attending the PGA lunch just before Christmas. At BTME, you see representatives from all segments of the industry – greenkeepers, course managers, turf and machinery experts and, of course, club managers. I’ve seen over the years – and I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been – that each time the exhibition has grown. It is a great meeting point and it’s amazing how many people I’ve got to know, and bumped into over these years, coming to BTME. It’s also a tremendous networking event, BIGGA have got bigger and better plans for 2019, and it looks a real positive for the industry. Our presence at BTME only cements the relationship between BIGGA and the GCMA. We’ll have BIGGA’s chief executive Jim Croxton and Sandra Raper, the northern administrator, at our North West meeting at the end of February so they are willing to spread their message right the way down through the club management regional structure. There’s a real spirit of cooperation between BIGGA, the PGA and GCMA – we can see the fruits of that in the Diploma in Golf Club Management – and each area is bringing its expertise. I absolutely welcome this close
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The success of BTME shows the value of close cooperation with BIGGA and the PGA.
Howard Williams
arrangement. When I first got involved in club management 15 years ago, there may have been a couple of PGA professionals who were looking to get into golf club management. Now, with the director of golf role, and because of the coordination between our three organisations, we can provide the education through our courses. We have our Principles of Golf Club Management course as an introduction, which covers all aspects of golf club management, and the role of club manager is a unique job – just as a PGA pro and course manager are unique jobs. I feel the three organisations working together can only benefit each other. Fortunately, that has been a
natural progression for all – it’s not been a forced marriage or get together. With the way the industry has changed, each of our three bodies have also changed and reacted accordingly. Everybody has endeavoured to ensure their members can be as professional, within their own sphere, as they can be. Certainly to get the Diploma this industry wide qualification – at such an accredited high level can only benefit both the individuals and the organisations themselves. The encouraging thing, for me as national captain, is that there are people coming and signing up on a regular basis to take the Diploma. That also can only benefit everyone in the industry.
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This GCMA club is famous for…
HESKETH At this Southport course, run by Martin Edge, is a tree with a very unusual story...
G
olf may not have been part of the Olympics for more than a century, until Justin Rose grabbed gold in Rio in 2016, but in 1936, under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler at the infamous Nazi games, the sport provided an intriguing sideshow to the main event. Ten days after the Fuhrer had presided over the official competition, seven two-man teams went head-to-head at Baden-Baden for the Golfpreis Der Nationen – The Great Golf Prize of the Nations. Even with war still three years away, distaste with the German regime was growing and, of the 36 countries sent invitations, only six accepted the entreaties of German Golf Union president Karl Henkell. One of those was the English, who sent Hesketh member Arnold Bentley and Ganton stalwart Tommy Thirsk to represent them in a 72-hole tournament where the scores of each player were combined. At first, it all went well for the German duo of Leonard von Beckerath and CA Helmers. Holding a five shot lead going into the final day, German foreign
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minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop sent word to Hitler of an imminent home win. As the dictator drove from Berlin to present the prizes to his charges, the English duo – thanks partly to two course-record 65s from Thirsk – surged to victory by four shots. It’s said Hitler, learning of the failure while in passage, furiously ordered his chauffeur to turn the car around. Henkell conducted the ceremony. Along with the trophy and two gold medals, Bentley and Thirsk were presented with an unusual prize – a small fir tree. Bentley’s tree found its way back to Hesketh where it was planted close to
the clubhouse. It survives to this day but had to show incredible fortitude to get through the war. Nicknamed the ‘Hitler Tree’ by members, it was frequently used as a urinal, which probably accounts for its rather unusual shape today. The trophy went missing for many years until it was unearthed in 2004. Hesketh raised the money – around £15,000 – to buy it and it resides in the clubhouse. What is it that makes your club special? Every club has something that makes it unique, that sets it apart from everywhere else. Why not let us know what it is? Email s.carroll@sportspubs.co.uk
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Are You Ready for the GDPR?
With just four months to go before the deadline of 25th May 2018, are you ready for the GDPR? This is the biggest shakeup to UK data protection legislation and it affects all organisations that hold personal information about UK Citizens. With fines of up to £20m or 4% of global turnover, you need to take ownership of the GDPR now! At BC technologies we have a GDPR Readiness package to help your club achieve compliance before the deadline. Working closely with the GCMA, we are already working with many clubs to raise awareness and help them become compliant. As a Certification Body for Cyber Essentials, which is a Government backed scheme that can help mitigate fines from the ICO, we are experienced in auditing and certifying businesses of all sizes against the UK regulator’s standards. We can take you through the whole process; •
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GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
In the
LOOP 1. BTME gets even bigger What’s happened: BIGGA have announced a restructure to their massive annual gathering, the BIGGA Turf Management Exhibition, in Harrogate, that will see the size of the floor space increase by up to 25 per cent next year. With a waiting list needed for the most recent event, and numbers for the Continue to Learn education sessions reaching record levels, the exhibition is expanding significantly. What does it mean? It’s already the leading turf management exhibition in Europe, attended not only by greenkeepers and course managers but plenty of club managers as well. The focus of BTME will shift to the main auditorium entrance of the Harrogate Convention Centre, opening up different exhibition spaces and will also mean the venue’s auditorium will be utilised for the key educational and celebratory events. Jim Croxton, BIGGA chief executive, said:“We’re delighted that BTME has grown to the extent that it can no longer be contained within the four traditional exhibition halls that
Three things you need to know from the last month in the golf industry…
we have utilised. The move to alternative facilities within the centre enables us to retain all that is good about BTME, the premier turf management event in Europe, while presenting an improved visitor experience and allowing all our exhibitor base to take the space they need to show their wares.” 2. Is your club creating an Open buzz? What happened: The R&A announced that club golfers will have the chance to tee it up at Carnoustie on the eve of the 147th Open in July. A group of 42 men and women will compete in a pairs’ Stableford in the second 9-Hole
Championship Final. Having secured their places through qualifying events at their clubs, they will take on the first four, and the iconic final five, holes of the Championship Course at the Angus venue on Saturday, July 14. What does it mean? This is something of an open goal, if you’ll excuse the pun, for clubs looking to drive engagement. It ticks a number of the governing body’s boxes for developing the game – shorter formats and Ready Golf – and also gives participants a chance to play an Open venue, with grandstands all up, right before the main event. With the various regional bodies having produced entry forms and posters to advertise the events, it’s as simple for club managers as designating a competition and filling in a results form. 3. GCMA wins coveted industry membership engagement award What happened: The Golf Club Manager was rewarded at the Association Awards UK 2017 in the Best Membership Engagement category at a ceremony in
@GCMAUK Great few days in Harrogate on GCMA course. Thanks to @GCMAUK for all their knowledge. @Grim’s dyke pro shop
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Forced to work from home today due to a planned power cut at the clubhouse but my word it’s remarkable how much I’ve got done.
Even had time to read the @ GCMAUK magazine over lunch. Great job again guys. @golfmanagergm
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We want to hear from you! Send your correspondence, on any subject, to letters@gcma.org.uk
Manchester. The Association of Association Executives were looking for projects that demonstrated creativity, expertise and innovation in the way an association interacted with its members. The judges explained the journal encouraged a sense of belonging and community and reinforced the purpose of the GCMA. They added that the project, which was re-launched in April last year,“achieved excellent responses from members and good engagement, and exceeded
targets and increased satisfaction.” What does it mean? “We are delighted to be recognised by AAE, and especially in this category, given membership engagement is key to the success of any association,” said Mike Hyde, GCMA communications manager. “We knew we wanted to put members back at the heart of the magazine and it’s incredibly satisfying to have positive member feedback backed up by an award from such a prestigious organisation.”
Welcome to our newest GCMA members Neil Ramsay, manager of Ripon City, in Yorkshire region Jason Thornton, manager of Harrogate, in Yorkshire region Alex Fleming, director of golf at Hunley Hotel & GC, in Northern region Callum Austin, director of golf at Old Fold Manor, in Chiltern & Home Counties region Michelle Perry, assistant at Royal Blackheath, in South East region Anna Darnell, director of golf at The Grove, in Chiltern & Home Counties region John Jackson, manager of Sale, in North West region Hayley Taylor, manager at Crewe, in North West region Sarah George, assistant at Cherry Lodge, in South East region, has rejoined the GCMA Members who have moved Tracy Rawlinson is the new general manager at Ringway in North West Alan Feltham is the new secretary at High Post in Wessex region
2018 - can’t wait to find and work with the first recipient of the @RainbirdGolf bursary with the @GCMAUK - career/professional development on your list
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for next year? What are you waiting for... #cpd #careeringolf #defendyourturf #aimhigh #bursary @AlastairHiggs
Matthew Parsley is the new general manager at Conwy (Caernarvonshire) in Wales region David Landsburgh is the general manager of Scotscraig in Scotland region
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GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
A Matter of Opinion
THE OUTSIDE VIEW
From left to right, Andy Wright, Alan Campbell and Lee Curling
H
ow is golf club management perceived in the wider golf industry? What do people really know about the work secretaries and general managers do and what do they know about the GCMA? At the last Principles of Golf Club Management course, in
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Harrogate, we asked a trio of attendees, all of whom work in different sectors of golf, to tell us what their preconceptions where, what they’ve learned from the course and what the next step is for golf… What are your perceptions of golf club management and does this course address these?
Alan Campbell: From my experience, of having worked in golf and having met a number of golf club managers, they are a sort of – I was going to say – jack of all trades but that’s kind of insulting. It’s a specific role, but they have a wide ranging remit, including front of house operations and, in some cases, overseeing greenkeeping. I think this course is going to
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What do greenkeepers, professionals and golf’s authority figures really think about club managers? Our trio of participants reveal all… enlighten me with more detail as to what they do and how to go about doing it. Lee Curling: For me, the course is about making me realise what happens in the back office. You can see front of house. I’ve been through nine or ten different secretaries or general managers at the club and you can see what they do going forward but you never see what they do in the office. So it is seeing what they do in the office as well as the outside. Andy Wright: For me, in the Golf Foundation, I probably go round up to 100 clubs a year to talk to different people and it is not always easy to pin a general manager down to talk to them. They seem to be very busy people and this has just confirmed that being here. The number of different roles and responsibilities that a general manager has is incredible. I think this allows me to appreciate that and also, by understanding the wider role, I think that will help me communicate with them better.
It is also trying to justify to them why it is important to talk to the Golf Foundation about developing junior golf. Do you feel generally that the role of golf club manager, or general manager, is becoming more professional? AC: Yes. I am old enough to remember the days of the old school golf club secretary, who used to stand with a gin and tonic on the veranda. To me, the golf club manager is becoming more professional. That’s not to say they weren’t professional in the past but it is becoming more business orientated. AW: From general secretary to general manager seems to be the change in terminology from my point of view. I’ve always understood it as a secretary until relatively recently. Even director of golf now is another role. It’s different names and different types of people taking on the role as well.
LC: I think a golf club has become more of a business than a golf club. You’ve got to know more about that business than just being the secretary of a golf club. Legislation is everything. New things have come in and you’ve got to be on the ball for that. You’ve got to be professional around the whole place and treat it like a business, not just a golf club. AC: And modern technology has changed everything in golf. You’ve got data protection things that you wouldn’t have had in the past. AW: I guess that adds pressure to the role, doesn’t it? They have to be more professional but they are more responsible for more things. It’s a challenging job to get into. LC: I feel like they’ve got to do more for their club. The board think you’ve got to be doing more and more than what you are and I think they’ve just got to realise how much of a job it is now to take on as a general manager. It’s a
MEET THE PANEL
Alan Campbell, from the South East of Scotland, a former greenkeeper for 23 years
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Andy Wright, South regional development officer for the Golf Foundation
Lee Curling, head professional at Grim’s Dyke, in Middlesex
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GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
”From general secretary to general manager seems to be the change in terminology from my point of view. I’ve always understood it as a secretary until relatively recently” – Andy Wright
lot of work. AW: Is it becoming too big a job for just one person? I’ve heard different examples of where there are numerous people that kind of cover for that general manager role. LC: You definitely need extra help in the office, definitely without a doubt. So a lot of it is about teamwork? LC: Yes, correct. Definitely. AW: What we can do, from our different angles, is help the general manager understand the different people that are there to help them as well. I think that’s obviously what the GCMA are doing. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions of the role of golf club manager? AW: I guess members would expect the general manager to be there all the time and it is understanding that this one person can only do a certain amount of hours in a week and they can’t expect them to be at their beck and call all week.
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LC: There are people helping in the office – assistant secretaries or bookkeepers – and they are going to be doing part of the work as well. The secretary or general manager is not going to be in that office all the time for them to speak to. You are a club pro Lee, and have taken on the office eight months ago, so you will have seen the office from the outside and looking in. Now you are sitting inside it… LC: I now realise that whoever was in that office didn’t ever get enough help. AW: Who does that come down to? There needs to be a team, doesn’t there? LC: It comes down to finances and it comes down to the board of directors putting someone there and making sure they have the help to be able to run that club correctly. You can’t do it on your own. AC: I think another misconception is that it’s still a meet and greet role.
The common thing for a lot of secretaries in the past was meet the visiting parties, have a chat with them: ‘how did your day go?’ You’ve still got to do that but I think people think that was the main function – to be out front and meeting and greeting, forgetting about the business part, VAT, staff and all these sort of things. We’ve touched on some of the legislation and the elements you need to be aware of during the course. Was some of that new to you? LC: It was new for me – the bar side of it and the legislation and the certificates you needed. I knew about licensing for the public coming to have a drink – we’ve just got that in the last couple of years and I was a part of that – but there’s a lot there that I’m pretty sure we have got but we need to make sure it’s there. You are checking it all the time because you are now the manager of that club and in charge of that. AC: Coming from the
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GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
”Flexible membership is perfect for everyone and the people who can and can’t afford membership can still play golf whenever they want, and that’s important” – Lee Curling greenkeeping side, we were always quite well up on health and safety and environmental concerns. It was always something at the forefront because the damage we could do to the environment was quite big, compared to some other parts of a golf course. We were quite up on that whereas other people, who haven’t come from the same background, might not be aware of the health and safety aspects of the course. AW: I guess that the number of different policies and procedures that a general manager has to carry out and be aware of has been quite revealing to me. I knew elements of it but the amount is
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quite incredible. What gives you optimism for the future of golf? AW: I think the game has grown up and become a lot more modern. It’s still taking small steps but I think it’s starting to accelerate. From my point of view – getting more juniors to play the game – it is becoming much more accessible. I hope, over the next five to ten years, we can really see those results of more younger people moving into golf club membership - and bringing their mums and their dads alongside them as well. LC: It is becoming a game for
everyone, and not just certain people, with the different kinds of membership we have got. Flexible membership is perfect for everyone and the people who can and can’t afford membership can still play golf whenever they want, and that’s important. It shouldn’t just be singled out to certain people. AC: I am quite excited to see the likes of GolfSixes and FootGolf. From what I’ve heard, people who are playing FootGolf are turning round and saying ‘I fancy a game of proper golf. Let’s see how it goes’. It’s bringing in much needed revenue, from what I can gather, and it’s quite a good social event. AW: On the back of the GolfSixes, the European Tour have asked the Golf Foundation to launch GolfSixes academies in some of the counties we are working with. This will be working with those children that are in academies and are still at beginner level. It’s probably their first taste of
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competition and they are playing in teams, and a quite relaxed format – a Texas Scramble – and six holes. They have coloured T-shirts to represent their team, some basic prizes and it’s a nice easy format to get more kids used to competition. That’s quite an exciting thing and we’ve already seen some nice results from that. AC: There are an increasing number of clubs that are putting in little academy courses – a short five holes – and you see them busy in the evenings because people have got time to go after supper, with the family, and that’s bringing people into golf. LC: Nine-hole golf is a big thing. People haven’t got time for golf and (with this), if they go to work, they have still got time for nine
different way, through the likes of TopGolf and simulators? How do you feel about that? AW: I think that helps the accessibility of golf. I think the more technology is brought into it, the more it is going to appeal to younger people. It is how we then transfer that into the real scenario in a golf club – and make sure they are ready to handle what expectations young people have going into them. LC: It’s not just about the seriousness of golf competitions. There’s a fun part in there for people who don’t want to take it into competition on a course. AC: There’s also a part of the market that don’t join a golf club. They play regularly, but they will go to a destination course because
more about trying different things, playing golf with your friends in a more social scenario than just playing golf for the fact of getting your handicap down and playing a competition.
it is something special. They may spend the same amount on golf, but they only play six times a year. It’s just a change of market. There’s a lot of that going on. AW: Possibly golf is changing and what we want from it. It’s not just about competition now. It is
really closely with the PGA and really see the value of the PGA coaches and what they bring to golf. I am seeing more of the value of working with BIGGA and the GCMA and I think that’s because of the climate we are in now. We are
How do you feel the main organisations in golf work together – like the GCMA, PGA, BIGGA, The R&A and so on? AW: I feel like we are working together better than we ever have, especially England Golf and the Golf Foundation. We’ve really got a shared objective for junior golf now. We have joint junior action plans we have put together. We take joint responsibility for things like safeguarding and retention of juniors within golf clubs. From our perspective, we’ve always worked
”There are an increasing number of clubs that are putting it little academy courses and you see them busy in the evenings” – Alan Campbell
holes and the social side of it. AW: A lot more people are considering academies as a stepping-stone between learning and becoming a member – to get that connection to the golf club. Are people coming to golf in a
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”It’s amazing to see how different the characters are and how different their facilities are and what they are being asked to do” – Andy Wright
all talking a lot more closely, even at my regional level. I think we are all working a bit closer together. LC: I could see it from the PGA side, before taking on the office. The Golf Foundation and the PGA worked brilliantly together. The communication was brilliant all the time. Being on the course, you can see how much the GCMA now work with the PGA and everyone else as well. You didn’t see that before but I think they are
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going to work, and they do work, very closely. AC: I think BIGGA has always had quite a good relationship with most of the other organisations – The R&A have connections with them as well. I think another interesting development on the organisational front is the amalgamation of the Ladies’ Golf Union with The R&A. I think that’s going to help push the game forward. I think that’s quite an interesting development – with organisations coming together and working together. It’s got to happen hasn’t it? If we work individually then no one is going to exist. We are stronger together aren’t we? LC: It’s the same at Middlesex County. The ladies and the men are together and everyone is communicating from the same aspect. It’s the same with the GCMA, BIGGA, PGA and the Golf Foundation working together.
It should come on leaps and bounds, shouldn’t it? So, for you, what is the value of networking within golf? AC: It’s very important. Some of the guys you meet (on the course) you only see them once a year but you can bounce ideas of each other quite often. LC: On the PGA side, we have always done that all the time but talking to the guys like myself, who have taken other jobs, they have been ringing up different general managers to ask them advice and they have been helping them all the time. AW: It’s amazing to see how different the characters are and how different their facilities are and what they are being asked to do. I would be interested to know what the next step is in terms of our learning – staying in touch with people after the meeting and sharing what we can carry on after this.
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Principles of Golf Club Management This training course is designed for either newcomers to the profession of golf club management, or an existing manager, secretary or assistant, who wants to bring themselves up-to-date with current management practices. The course content is relevant for both private members and proprietary clubs. The course is delivered by industry experts and serving managers, and topics include: » Membership & Club Management Systems » Food & Beverage Operations » Marketing and Membership Schemes » Running Golf Competitions » Golf Club Governance
» Course Ratings and Handicaps » Accounting Principles » Health & Safety » Employment Law » Golf Club Law
Upcoming Dates 12 – 16 March 2018: Newbury, Berkshire 10 – 14 September 2018: Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire 19 – 23 November 2018: Wyboston, Bedfordshire Costs The cost of the course is £995 (VAT exempt). This includes all course materials, accommodation and food throughout.
To Book or for More Information
Visit gcma.org.uk/education, or contact GCMA education coordinator Niki Hunter: niki@gcma.org.uk or 01275 391153
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The interview
NICHOLAS AMOAH It’s nearly 7,500km from Accra to Weybridge but nothing was stopping Ghana’s Nicholas Amoah from attending our conference at MercedesBenz World. The general manager at Tema Country Golf Club tells Steve Carroll why he joined the GCMA and why he’s determined to improve golf in his country…
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Tema Country Golf Course Found in Greater Accra, the course first opened in 1957 and boasts “country club quality greens and beautiful practice areas”. At 5,680 yards, five minutes drive from the Tema Motorway – Ghana’s first motorway – the course is renowned for both its ponds and its warm welcome. Offering a stern test, thanks to its sandy nature, the beautifully manicured greens - transformed from browns half a decade ago – are one of the major attractions of a round at Tema.
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I
s golf a popular sport in Ghana? We are in Africa and golf is not naturally a game that the majority of the population are playing. A lot of people are looking to watch football, which is the sport that dominates the world. Golf is naturally picking up in Ghana and gradually we are developing. In my area, we have about four golf courses. How big is your area? Tema has the biggest golf course in Ghana – it’s 18-holes and, in terms of structure, we are the biggest golf course. But Achimota is a course that has had a facelift. It’s a course that was built by Paul McGinley and that has naturally lifted up the standard in our area but Tema has that potential to become the best golf course in West Africa. Given football’s dominance, how did you become a golf club manager? How did you get into the sport?
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Golf’s not a game that anyone would have as a first game to love (in Africa). Obviously, we watch football – you participate, you play football – but when sports are on TV you find they are showing golf. A lot of Africans look up to Tiger Woods, and that brought that sort of interest for people to see how a black guy in that contest is playing that game. It has brought a lot of people and their attention to golf. I wasn’t into golf. I was in telecommunications. What happened was that my boss played golf. At three o’clock, he picks up his bag and is going on a golf course. I was kind of wondering where he was going. There were a couple of meetings that we had to go and have on a golf course and, anytime I went there, I saw a lot of people. I said ‘what kind of game is that where you see a lot of people?’ Especially the elite and managers, CEOs and people like that. It was a place where you had a lot of networking. That made me interested to know what golf was all about. Fortunately, one time I went to the
golf course and I was told there was a vacancy for an assistant manager. I said ‘wow’. So I told my boss I really wanted to experience this and I wanted to apply for the job. He looked at me and smiled. I applied for the job and got it. I was assistant manager for about five years. My immediate boss passed away and I acted for about six months before being promoted to become the manager. I have been doing that for the past six years. So it was just by chance? Yes. I developed a passion for it and the reason why I am actually a member of the GCMA is that I realised that, with golf in Ghana, we don’t have that sort of opportunity or a facility where people get developed – in terms of education – or try to educate themselves and have that experience when it comes to golf management. There’s nothing like that. Our greenkeepers are usually employed from being a professional golfer and I
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always thought ‘no, that’s not a qualification’. Obviously, you need to be properly trained and go through a lot of education to be a greenkeeper. I said to myself ‘I want to make a difference’ so that made me search and search and I found out about the GCMA and quickly I registered to become a member. I was in dire need of wanting to know the next opportunity I could be able to come and start having a basic education in golf management. Last year, I got the opportunity to attend an introduction (the Principles of Golf Club Management course) and that was a massive ten for me. I got to meet a lot of managers
put certain things in place about how our caddies should position themselves when golfers are hitting balls and so on. It took me from that lower level and, I can tell you, it has taken me up now. Do you feel almost like you are bringing this knowledge to golf in Ghana? Exactly so and it is my dream that I become the first certified golf course manager in my country. There are none – none like that in my country – and I really want to do this. It has been my dream and I really want to push. Sometimes, when I come over here, I see a lot of facilities around and I see a lot of things that I can learn.
“What drives me more is that passion and the love I have developed for the game. What drives me more is the vision I see” and it took me to a different level. You’d been in management a long time before you joined that course. Did you feel your knowledge increased a lot just by going on it? Yes. I realised that there were a lot of things that I didn’t know and I was taking a lot of things for granted. I will tell you one thing. Health and safety wasn’t something that was so very important in that part of my world. But after attending the introduction course, I realised this was something I had to take important notice of. Health and safety is very important. I learned a lot during that time and when I went back I had to
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I wish that I had the opportunity to be able to stay here for a longer period – say two or three years – and get to equip myself with as much as I can learn and then go back and try to impart that knowledge. Of course, there is a process to everything and I am taking it stepby-step. This must be a massive commitment for you – to attend the introduction course, go on the Diploma this year and attend national conference – both in time and financially. So what drives you to come here? I have the love for it so I don’t mind the time. What I am doing is not club supported. I usually fall on the
assistance of some of the senior members of my club who have seen the potential in me and some of them are helping me out in terms of my travel coming over here. What drives me more is that passion and the love I have developed for the game. What drives me more is the vision I see of what we can take golf to in my area. I feel like we can also get to that level where we can host a European Tour or PGA Tour tournament in Ghana. That’s where I am looking and that’s what is driving me to take these steps. Have you seen much of UK golf while you have been here? Have you visited a number of courses? Yes. I have been to a few courses and some of the managers who I’ve met at training invited me to come to their courses and I took the opportunity to visit some of them. I was so impressed by what I saw. I played quite a few rounds and, in terms of management, it is quite different from what we have back in Ghana. They have much better facilities. The greens are different and all that. It’s a learning curve for me and I am taking it step-by-step going forward. What are some of the challenges of being a golf club manager in Ghana compared with the UK? Back in Ghana, the whole management of a golf club is centred around the captain and what the captain can do. Sometimes they move the attention from what the staff and the management staff of the club are doing. Here, there is a lot of opportunity
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for the managers, a lot of commitment from the managers and they are always working the hours to make sure they are able to succeed. Back in Ghana, much of the attention is on the club executives. There’s probably a lot that’s very similar between the two countries as well. Do members complain about the greens, the price of food and so on? Someone said that golfers are one and the same – they tend to complain. They’ll come back and talk about the greens, the drains and the services. Of course, it is important as a manager that you must listen more and speak less. They will come and complain but you must listen and look at how you will be able to satisfy your members. It is very important. Losing members is always one of the hard things that you go
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through as a club manager. When the complaints come, you listen and see how you are going to improve your services to members. Do you want to change how golf is perceived in Ghana or do you see your future internationally as part of the GCMA? One of reasons I am doing what I am doing is to help my country develop in golf. That’s my aim. Obviously, you have the opportunity to work internationally and you want to do that but I look at it more as taking in Ghana to a different level. I believe that I can do it if I am able to go through all this education and I have a lot of experience. What do you think is the most important thing you have learned so far from your experiences with the GCMA? At Conference, I met people I
haven’t met on previous visits and I have seen that software also goes with golf course management – that’s something I haven’t actually come across before. I try to search and see what could be good for my club but then I realised it would also make my work more efficient and at a fast pace. It’s something that is really helpful. Is it nice to be able to draw on that sense of community that’s so important within the GCMA? There’s always someone at the end of an email for you now… Of course. The people here are very good people. Everybody wants to assist you, especially when they know you’ve come from afar. Everybody is friendly and has opened their arms to you. They want you to come and see what they are doing and so it has been good.
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GCMA RECRUITMENT
FOR MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE VACANCIES BELOW, VISIT GCMA.ORG.UK/JOBS
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Good
PRACTICE Advice on golf club management issues – from finance to clubhouse rules and employment law to staff morale – from our panel of experts
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In the
FRAME
A
picture is worth 1,000 words. It’s a cliché but for David Cannon it couldn’t be truer. “The crucial thing, I think, when courses are looking to commission a photographer,” he says when asked why pictures should be so important to golf clubs,“is that it’s amazing the power of one image to sell a course.
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“If you are able to have one really stunning image of a golf course, it’s incredible how that will perceive what the whole course is like.” Cannon has criss-crossed the globe photographing the world’s best players and venues in a threedecade career with Getty Images. He’s covered more than 100 men’s major golf tournaments, has worked closely with the game’s greats and is a single figure
handicapper who has played hundreds of courses around the globe. In short, he knows golf. He knows courses and he knows what makes a standout photograph. With marketing becoming more and more important for club managers, and the need to stand out from the crowd – particularly in terms of your website and social media – ever greater, Cannon
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David Cannon is one of the world’s premier golf photographers. The Getty Images man tells Steve Carroll what makes a great course picture Turnberry
reveals why photography should be such a big consideration for your yearly budget… What goes into a great golf course picture? It’s all about light. I like a little bit of elevation, so you can see down a hole. I love to take pictures from a golfer’s perspective - from where they are likely to take shots. So I’m not necessarily looking for
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just a beautiful picture. For me, it is very much golfer based – even though I do love clambering up sand dunes and hills to get angles on courses. I definitely try to shoot from the tee, or second shots, and behind the green can be a really effective way of showing a picture. The tidiness and shape of the fairway is important. I am a great fan of stripes, or cross stripes, and it
makes for a better picture. The fad of mowing it all with the grain, or against the grain, which has come from Augusta doesn’t make for good golf course pictures. I think it kind of spoils them. I’m also looking for the first hour and last hour of light because that brings up the undulations of a fairway or a hole – the shadows will show then in the fairways. The shape of bunkers is really
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“What you want to portray as best as possible is your course looking the best and in the best possible light”
important to me. It’s amazing how much time I have to spend raking bunkers before I take a picture, just because players don’t look after the way they rake bunkers. It’s incredible. It just looks so messy. How important should good photography be to club managers? The power of one amazing beautiful image of your golf course is so important. When you’re commissioned, do you get frustrated when you look at a golf club website and the images you see are very poor? I don’t get frustrated, I get encouraged by that because I know I can do a lot better. What does frustrate me is that clubs are quite reticent to pay properly for course photography. I don’t think they quite realise the value of it and I can count on one hand in a year the jobs that I would say we get paid properly for
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on course photography, which is a frightening thing to say really. But I do like visiting courses and I love having a library of great golf course pictures. It should be the number one thing that draws a golfer into a club’s website… I would definitely pray that is the case and I think it is improving a little bit because marketing is now becoming so important for golf clubs – the revenue they can get from visitors is so vital for a club’s survival in a year. I would be interested to see – and I am not involved enough to know – how many courses have a specific budget for photography. I imagine in many cases it’s an employee who gets sent out with a camera… Or it’s a member who has got a nice camera, or a photographer who is not a golf course photographer and might be a member. That happens. I don’t
take anything against that. If I was managing a club I would try to keep my costs down. When you are doing that, though, you are very much at the mercy of the weather in this country. There’s only so much in Photoshop you can do. I don’t do very much in Photoshop and the integrity of a picture is what I see, basically. There’s obviously a bit of technical tidying up that goes on when I am working for a client. We can remove bunker rakes and tidy up divots on tees very easily, but I am not going to alter pictures, or alter the sky that is there. So you would urge managers to spend a moment thinking about the impact of photography and then to invest in it as they would any other part of their business.. They’re investing in nice mowers aren’t they and all that kind of stuff? I would advise that photography is an important part of a budget.
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Alwoodley
Not necessarily every year. A really great image can last a lifetime but so many golf courses are tinkering now with changes to bunkers. The number of courses that I have shot in the last 15 years, the pictures I have got are out of date already. Every time you do an Open Championship venue, they have reshaped the bunkers, re-faced them. Carnoustie last year was a classic example. There was so much work going on with the bunkers and that was really tough to photograph. You’ve got such a great library of pictures but what are your favourite course images that you’ve taken? In Britain, I am very fond of the Ailsa course at Turnberry and I was very fond of it before Donald Trump did what he did. I think, as a photographer, Turnberry is such an iconic venue. I obviously had a nice time at Alwoodley when I worked for them. I love that course and
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Gleneagles I have done recently and I got really lucky with the weather there. I am really proud of the pictures I got for them and they had a good budget and I did a very professional job. It took four days. That’s the other thing of which you’ve got to be aware. Because of the weather, and when you are working only for the first couple of hours or the last couple of hours of the day, you are very reliant on getting nice windows of opportunity when the weather’s nice. That’s really important to note. There are specific times when you can do your best work… There’s a serious amount of time involved and that’s why it is expensive, or relatively expensive. Take the plunge is your advice to club managers… Well, I’d hope so and trust in us. The weather forecasting nowadays is so much better and so much more
accurate and I know the weather patterns more in Britain now and I know what I am looking for. If the weather’s coming from the East and it’s a big high pressure it’s not going to make great pictures of golf courses. It’s fact – you get that bright, hazy sunshine and not great cloud changes and cloudscapes. I don’t think you are going to get the best pictures when you think it would be the best time. It’s a funny thing. What you want is April showers all year. The level of detail you put into that is what sets you guys apart… I’d like to think so and we are trying to get accurate pictures of what it actually looks like on a certain day. What you want to portray as best as possible is your course looking the best and in the most stunning light. For more on Getty Images, visit gettyimages.co.uk
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How to... help your photographer get the
BEST POSSIBLE PICTURES
Roehampton
T
here’s more to taking a great course image than meets the eye. You might think, once you’ve decided to spend the money and hire a photographer, it’s merely a matter of sitting back and waiting to receive some stunning pictures that show off your course – and make visitors flock to play it and members want to join. But there’s a huge amount of
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time and preparation that the professionals put in to ensure a shoot is a success. Every one at the club, from the manager to the part-time staff, may need to play their part. Andy Hiseman, who runs Magic Hour Golf, has a long list of satisfied customers including GCMA members Berkhamsted, Wildernesse and Surrey Downs. It’s because of the diligence and effort he puts into every shoot –
starting months before he’ll ever set foot on a course. From sending a hugely detailed email outlining every possible aspect of the process, to arranging a pre-shoot phone call, he’ll then spend up to 14 hours a day on the course, over multiple days, if conditions demand it. Here he gives some key tips to help you plan ahead and ensure you receive some stunning images that will last for years…
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You’ve allocated precious budget to grab great course images. So what do you need to do to ensure you get the best possible results? Andy Hiseman, of Magic Hour Golf, reveals all to Steve Carroll…
The key factor is time If we’re talking about a UK shoot, where the golf course is a big part of that shoot, it’s timing. There’s a short-ish window to do this properly in the UK. If you are looking for autumn colours, or something wintry, then fair enough but, generally in this country, the leaves all come back on the trees in May. It’s timing and thinking about it. Do I want my course to look green or yellow? If you want it to look green, try not to schedule a photo shoot too far into July because a lot of the time you’ll find that a lot of the fairways are quite yellow by that stage. My recommendation is to think about May and June as your key times for photography. September is also a fantastic month. I’ve done an awful lot of shoots in July as well, which have been fine, but if you are booking this in advance, you’ve gone to the committee or the owner of the club, you’ve agreed you’re going to spend some budget on it, that discussion usually happens quite a way before the shoot takes place. If, for whatever reason, the course won’t be ready before July, I’d still go ahead and book a photo shoot but clubs need to be prepared for a little bit of postponement if it’s been a really hot spring or early summer and the fairways have gone a little bit. As a photographer these days, we are all pretty adept in postproduction and it is relatively
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straight forward to colour correct fairways that have gone a little bit yellow as long as you are not altering basic reality. I use Lightroom. I don’t use Photoshop at all and a lot of photographers are the same. But I would say you’ve got to think about timing. Generally you want it green and lush. What I’m looking for on the course You are looking for colour and definition. They make the difference. Colour is to do with the time of year, with the course manager being on their game. There are various things you can do to keep a course green, or make it green. I am one of these people, as a golfer myself, who does like stripes. There are plenty of purists in course architecture who think over-striping a golf course is slightly sacrilegious and tasteless. I am not one of those. You will see an awful lot of very stripy fairways in my portfolio. I know people love to see big handsome stripy fairways. That’s something that’s easier to do if your grass is growing healthily. To set off those fairways, it’s useful if you grow the rough. It’s easy for me. I ask an awful lot and then I photograph what I find. Part of what I ask for is that clubs grow the rough and give me lots of definition to frame the photos with. You’re unpopular with your golfers and members, of course, because they all start losing golf balls.
So there is a trade off there. Playability suffers if you grow the rough up but the photos don’t half look good. Change your routine while I am there That sun goes down fast when you don’t want it to. It’s rare you get the perfect sky. You’ve either got – ironically – too much sun and a very bland clear blue sky, which is okay but doesn’t make for great photos – or a slightly cloudy sky
“There are plenty of purists in course architecture who think over-striping a golf course is slightly sacrilegious and tasteless. I am not one of those”
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“Say you are lucky enough to get a great sky and a lovely sunrise or sunset. A red or a blue flag becomes virtually invisible as light levels go”
Moor Allerton
with the sun poking through. That gives the best light. You’ve only got limited time to photograph it, so if there is a big, horrible, unraked bunker or one with a great big puddle in the middle then you’re either raking it yourself and missing the shot or you’re spending ages afterwards in Lightroom and not quite getting it right. Even the time of day bunkers are raked makes a difference. If clubs rake them late in the day, the evening and dawn shots will look better. A lot of the time at a club, you’ll see the greenkeepers are out early and they’ve got a certain routine. Part of that routine is generally raking the bunkers at the start of the day. That’s too late. If I do an evening shoot, and the bunkers were raked six or seven hours before, then they’ve been at the mercy of the golfers and they quite often are looking a bit rubbish. Ditto if they don’t rake them until early morning. By that time, I’ve generally been on the course for a couple of hours so I am photographing this beautiful dawn light but the bunkers haven’t been raked since about 9am the previous morning.
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Great course pictures take time…and effort from everyone I am perfectly happy to get there an hour before sunrise and stay there until the very last rays of sun and work the full 14 hours in between. I am prepared to put that time in and they pay for that time. But if the course owner or manager doesn’t put a similar amount of effort in, or ask their staff to put a similar amount of effort in, that extra 10 or 15 per cent won’t be there in the pictures. When the greenkeepers don’t even realise a photographer is going to be there, you know you are struggling. When the head chef has no idea you are going to turn up and ask to photograph some of his dishes, or the wedding co-ordinator hasn’t got the room ready for you, you just think ‘well, value for moneywise, you are not getting the maximum here’. Little things make a difference If you are spending a couple of thousand pounds on a photo shoot, getting a new set of flags that year and putting them on the course temporarily while I am
there – it makes a huge difference. Especially at dawn and dusk. Let’s say you are lucky enough to get a great sky and a lovely sunrise or sunset. A red flag or a blue flag becomes virtually invisible as the light levels go down. In contrast, white or yellow flags really pop out of the image. If clubs have that convention of red, yellow and white flags to denote front, middle and back, I ask them to suspend that for the 48 hours that I am generally there and not put any red flags out. It seems like a small detail but it is a big thing for me. The one thing you can do ahead of my arrival Grow the rough so the course is well defined. It’s about clear definition between fairway and rough. If you have definition throughout the hole, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a good shoot. For more information, contact Andy Hiseman, at Magic Hour Golf, by emailing andy@hiseman.com, visiting magichourgolf.com or calling 07795 360112.
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WILDERNESSE CASE STUDY
WILDERNESSE
With a redesigned website, which features prominent images throughout, Wildernesse were delighted with the results when they decided to hire a specialist golf course photographer. The Kent club called in Andy Hiseman for a series of high quality images they could use to market the club and show off their new clubhouse development. Tom Scott, Wildernesse deputy secretary, outlines what was involved… Why did you decide to hire a golf course photographer? Our existing catalogue of photographs had been compiled over a number of years, via varying sources. There was no continuity in the photos and they lacked the quality required to maximise the impact of highresolution screens and devices. We had also recently redeveloped a large portion of the clubhouse, so this needed capturing for use in any future marketing material. Were there any budgetary considerations involved? Yes, as with all expenditure we needed to ensure we received value for money. The previous catalogue
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contained mainly member taken photographs, but we agreed we needed a professional with the correct equipment from the outset.
the photographs promptly. As a golfer himself, Andy was able to suggest the requirements and understood that the business must continue to operate.
What did you have to do to prepare? We booked the shoot at a time of the year that we knew the course would be photogenic and pre-warned the greenkeeping staff. They worked tirelessly to ensure the course was at its most presentable and avoided any major or disruptive practices.
How have you used the images? The images have created a main base for our redesigned website (wildernesse.co.uk), which is based on visual imagery rather than text. We have also used a selection of the images within the lobby of the clubhouse.
How did it go on the day? The shoot spanned a couple of days, to allow for varying light and weather conditions. The majority of the on course photos were taken early in the morning or into the evening, which gave the moody light setting. We were able to work around the bookings over the days and provide time to set up the clubhouse in varying formats.
What was the reaction from members and visitors? Positive. Our members are extremely proud of their course, so they like to see it captured so well.
How satisfied were you with the experience? Andy is clearly an experienced photographer and was able to advise us accordingly. He worked independently and turned around
THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S VIEW Andy Hiseman said:“They prepared the course immaculately. Almost every hole gave me a beautiful shot that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a calendar. “It is quite a naturally photogenic place and I could see when I got there the care they had taken and the results really showed. I had a very high percentage of course shots that were keepers at Wildernesse.”
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Making the best use of
YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS
T
ake a moment to think about what you do when you buy something. As you research the process, whether that’s online or through the pages of a magazine, how do you do it? You look at an image. “I’m always looking at the pictures first,” says Geoff Ellis, of marketing, website design and photography firm Golfworking. “If I’m buying a coffee machine, or going on a holiday, I always look at the photographs first.” So why would golf be any different? If a potential visitor is looking to pay a green fee, or a prospective member’s thinking about signing up, the first place they’re going to go is that club’s website. The first thing they’re going to do is look at images of the course and the club. Ellis adds:“It’s really important that people are attracted to the website through the photographs. They look at the photographs and then they are going to read more. “So we have got to try and get those as prominent and in their face as possible.” Ellis has been building club websites for more than a decade. His clients range from the high profile – such as Lindrick, Royal Porthcawl and Notts – to your average run of the mill club. But while those clubs might be very different, and have very different aims, Golfworking’s approach doesn’t alter.
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Photographs are the central component of what he does. “The images are really the basis of the design,” Ellis explains. “Looking at our websites, you’ll see the images really make the most of them.” Golfworking uses photography as a design tool and Ellis is blunt about the impact “sub-standard” images can have on the work he does. “The websites we have produced, where the club have tried to cut a corner or they’ve got an enthusiastic member to do it, never look quite as good as they could if they had really strong photography. “You’ve got to have good text, and a good design, and an easy to use website that responds across all devices. But one of the best ingredients to get right is the photography because that will make or break it sometimes.” Ellis recently revamped Notts’ webpages – transforming their site from a text-heavy offering to pages laden with glorious images of the course and club at its finest. “If you were doing your research
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You’ve hired a photographer. You’ve got some lovely images. Now how do you use them? Making them the focus of your website might just be the answer…
online of where next to play, you would say ‘wow, that looks nice we want to have our society day here’. ‘We want to play our next game here’. ‘We’re looking to join a golf club’. If you brought up their old website, it would be ‘what’s the hype about this place?’ Hopefully, you now think ‘wow, this is as good as they say it is’. “You go on their website now and think ‘I want to find out more’.” Key for the Golfworking team is finding out the heartbeat of a club, and making it stand out. “You can’t have a website that looks like the club down the road,” Ellis asserts.“You are the crowd then. You want something that goes ‘that looks great’. It’s about understanding what a club’s unique selling points are. Lindrick
was a good example. “Before we redid their website, you’d go on there and think ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ “Or if you hadn’t heard of them, you’d go on and say ‘why is this so much more expensive as a green fee than the course down the road?’ In Lindrick’s case, they had the Ryder Cup angle to push and, recently, we’ve added more about Danny Willett being a member.“ Ultimately, the aim is for visitors to see the course displayed in beautiful images and feel compelled to play it. “That’s the response we want from this website. ‘We’ve looked at the website and this is a course we want to go and visit’.” For more information, visit golfworking.co.uk
Looking for the third dimension? find it with 360 Picture UK Using the latest in 3D scanning camera technology, 360 Picture UK produce a 3D virtual reality (VR) model of your property. That model can then be included in club websites as well as being shared across social media pages. What makes this different, and engaging, is that customers can view the model in a virtual space stepping inside to view any area in high definition 4K detail. Other media, such as YouTube video, still images or text fields, can then be added within the model to provide extra detail that can enhance any given particular feature. Trusted photographers for Google Street View and Matterport Service Partners, 360 Picture UK can add that special eye catching touch to a club website. Based in Trentham, 360 Picture UK have carried out projects for the likes of Greenway Hall Golf Club, Trentham Shopping Village, HMS Developments Ltd and The People’s Picture. For more information, visit 360picture.uk
Pyle and Kenfig
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ADVERTORIAL FEATURE
Suppliers Guide
CHIP & PIN SOLUTIONS Chip & PIN Solutions are working with the GCMA to help members save money on card processing costs.
C
hip & PIN Solutions, the UK’s leading provider of card payment solutions, is now working with The Golf Club Managers’ Association to help members save money on card processing costs. Whether you have made a New Years resolution to start accepting card payments in 2018 or looking to make the switch from your existing supplier, Chip & PIN Solutions have worked closely with the GCMA to set up preferential rates. So why do 10% of UK Golf Clubs use Chip & PIN Solutions for their card acceptance needs? Founded in 2004, Chip & PIN Solutions is one of the UK’s leading independent payment providers, and as a result, has recently been acquired by Valitor, an Icelandic bank. Unlike many payment providers in the UK, every aspect of card acceptance is handled in-house. This includes everything from merchant account set up; terminal delivery and most importantly complete in-house customer support on terminal functionality and receiving funds into the member’s bank account.
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What makes Chip & PIN Solutions different?
£50 towards GCMA Membership.
No third-parties involvement
Over the years Chip & PIN Solutions has formed excellent partnerships with a number of trade associations, professional bodies and key stakeholders across the UK. Supporting their members by providing the latest card payment technology, highly discounted rates and excellent customer service. We will also provide members with £50 towards their annual GCMA membership with any purchase.
There will be no third-party involvement, which means members will deal directly with Chip & PIN solutions throughout the entire card acceptance journey. Lowest transaction rates As a result of our own in-house payments processing, members will benefit from some of the lowest transaction rates in the industry. In addition, members will have access to the latest and most reliable technology including dual mobile and Wi-Fi terminals to support growth.
David Maisey, Founder & Managing Director of Chip & PIN Solutions announced, “We are delighted to be working with the GCMA. This commercial agreement is expected to bring substantial benefits to GCMA members. Our service portfolio offers cost effective and efficient payment solutions that are perfectly tailored to retailers.” For more information about Chip & PIN Solutions, please visit chipandpinsolutions.com or call 0800 881 8104.
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0800 881 8104 chipandpinsolutions.co.uk
A
COMPANY
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Why should your club use social media for
MARKETING?
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ED U C AT E | I N FO RM | I N S P I RE
Sam Poole, of Albatross Digital Golf, tells Steve Carroll how you can use Facebook, Twitter and co to boost both your profile…and revenue
I
f your club isn’t already riding the social media bus then you’re being left squarely behind when it comes to promotion and marketing. As well as using the likes of Facebook and Twitter to tell people what’s happening at your course, more and more clubs are waking up to the possibilities these platforms bring to SELL to customers. While that may require a leap of faith for those of us that aren’t among the more technologically minded, the benefits of getting to grips with these ever growing mediums cannot be underestimated. As a former golf club manager at Leigh, Sam Poole used social media to its full advantage and reaped the rewards. Now at marketing specialists Albatross Digital Golf, who better to help you get to grips with how to make it work for your club? Why is social media becoming such an effective marketing tool? With social media, you are regularly putting the golf club’s name in front of people in a non-intrusive way. Even if it is sharing a video of someone teeing off on the first or someone holing a great putt on the 18th – anything like that is associated with the golf club. With more traditional forms of marketing, you’ve got to be pretty lucky to hit the right person at the right time, and who is ready to buy
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when they see that advert. With social media, you are just regularly keeping yourself at the top of people’s mind and, when they are ready to purchase or are coming to that stage of the decision making process, you’re the club they see they want to join or play a round. So golf clubs are missing a trick by not using social media for marketing… That’s correct. A lot of clubs are still using social media as a way of communicating purely to their membership. A lot of clubs will have emails to communicate with members, and websites with members’ areas. Social media should be used more to attract new customers. A lot of clubs in the past may have posted they have a membership offer available and it’s a two line text post that’s got no engagement whatsoever and they have just assumed social media doesn’t work. The power of social media, when you get to know it a little bit better, speaks for itself in the results we have been getting for clubs. So what should clubs be doing? The big thing at the moment is video content. That’s becoming the biggest thing on Facebook. If you go onto your feed now, the top five, six or seven posts will all be video because Facebook are prioritising that. It can be as simple as filming
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the first hole with the sun coming up. A quick five-second video, even, saying ‘it looks great here today – take a look at our first hole, would you like to come down and play?’ It’s also getting (people) to know faces at the club. The club manager can do a 10 or 15 second video introducing themselves to the Facebook audience. Video is certainly one thing of which clubs should be doing more. It’s about posting regular content that gets people engaged.
They just associate it with another post from that golf club. It doesn’t appear to be that you are selling to them but they see it and react to it in the same way they would if it was an organic post. If I am a club manager, how do I know when to put up an organic post and a paid post? The general rule of thumb is every one in ten posts could be a paid or a sales post. What we would do at Albatross is a lot of organic posting
paid post behind it, you want to be reaching a much wider audience so that you can bring new faces and new revenue into the club. These paid posts need to be really targeted? It’s not just having a membership offer and shoving £10 at Facebook… We work with clubs and find out what their ideal customer is. We will get their demographic and we will plug those into Facebook and they will give us a highly targeted
“With social media, you are regularly putting the club’s name in front of people in a nonintrusive way. Even if it is sharing a video of someone teeing off on the first”
You’re talking about both organic and paid content there? Why and when should we use them? With things like video, they are good for organic and paid. You don’t want to be bombarding your users on Facebook constantly with advertising and sponsored posts. You want to be more natural with them – posting good golf course photography and videos of the pro doing a chipping lesson. Anything like that is really good for organic reach and then what you do is hide your sponsored posts within them. It almost becomes natural. They don’t associate it with a sales post.
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– maybe two or three a week – getting people engaged with those. Then when we are doing a big membership campaign, for example, we will put a good budget behind one sales post. So there’s really no right or wrong answer to how often you should do it but we use organic more often and sales posts every now and then when we have got a hard-hitting campaign or advert that we want to put out there. Your organic posts are naturally going to reach the people that have liked your page already. You know they are interested in your golf club. If you are going to put a
audience. It’s all about reaching people you know are interested in golf – targeting people that have liked magazines or Tiger Woods, for example. There are lots of platforms out there. How do we know which one to use? There’s a platform called Hootsuite that’s really good for posting content across a wide range of social media platforms and that is quite time saving because you can just copy and paste pretty much the same post, which is great for managers. From my point of view, having been a golf club manager
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myself, I know time is very short for this type of thing. You are trying to juggle ten different things at once and social media can slip down the pecking order. What I would always say is Facebook is the main driver for the golf industry. If you are limited on time, stick to Facebook. It’s going to give you the best results. When you are ready to put some sales posts out there, you will already have built up a good audience to push that out. Twitter and Instagram appear more instant. Posts on Facebook seem to be longer lasting… Not many people will go onto your Twitter profile and scroll through all your tweets. On Facebook, there’s a lot more chance of people doing that. Something that you’ve posted two weeks ago can still be relevant to someone scrolling through your Facebook feed. In terms of Twitter, it is that instant hit and if you are not there at the right place and at the right time you don’t really get much response. We find that Twitter is good for greenkeepers. If you can give your greenkeeper access to Twitter and he can put on regular updates on what’s happening on the golf course, and good imagery from first thing in the morning when the sun’s coming up, things like that are great for Twitter – and your members would want to keep in touch with that as well. If there was one thing you’d say to clubs considering using social media as a marketing tool, what would it be? Look at the rate of returns we have been getting. If you see that none of your competition are doing this, and aren’t reaching that target audience, being the first to market gives you a huge competitive advantage.
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CASE STUDY
As general manager at Leigh, Sam Poole turned £14 into thousands in revenue on Facebook. This is what he did… “Around our catchment area, none of our competition were really doing anything to communicate with that audience. “The golf clubs were using more traditional methods – putting adverts in local publications and magazines – so it just seemed to make sense for us to try and attract a new audience. “We thought that social media might help us attract a bit of a younger demographic but, as it turned out, the average age of the members we got in was actually 47. “We saw a bit of a gap and we saw an opportunity to get in there first. “The main thing (with Facebook) is targeting power. “When you go into boosting posts, you can really get into the exact demographic of whom you are looking to attract. For example, we wanted a broad range of golfers and ages – 18 to 65 plus. “We targeted people that had liked the European Tour, PGA Tour, Rory McIlroy – people that we knew were interested in golf in the area. “You can set a certain radius on it, and we set within 10 miles for membership because people, generally, aren’t going to travel any more than that to be a member of a club. “The targeting power is really the key thing and, also, the fact that the
organic reach for Facebook is far more than other platforms. “We ran a competition to win a fourball voucher and, just by getting people to share that on their Facebook feed, the organic reach you get goes into the thousands quite quickly. “There was a little bit of luck involved. “When we simply put out a competition to win a free fourball voucher it just went massive because people in that area had never seen anything like it from a golf club before. “Being first to market gave us such a big competitive advantage. In behind that, we did a soft sell on memberships. “We had a 15 month for the price of 12 offer and we got 28 new members from that. “The initial hook was the competition to generate the interest – to get people’s information – and then on the back of that we sold the benefits of the club, sold a really good membership offer and that generated really good returns.” For more infomation on how to effectively use social media as a marketing tool and revenue raiser, visit albatrossdigitalgolf. com
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Cashing In On
SOCIAL MEDIA
Y
ou can imagine the reaction when Andrew Minty presented his club board with a plan to spend money on social media. “They were obviously very wary,” the Langland Bay director of golf admits.“It’s internet based and, at the time, businesses weren’t really getting into it. But the return has been fantastic.” Marketing revolved around traditional techniques, and Minty used editorials and promotions to push the golf club – just as many of
his contemporaries have for decades. But Minty, the GCMA’s Manager of the Year in 2015, saw an opportunity at the picturesque Welsh club. “I’d had a couple of seminars regarding social media, when things really started to kick off and we started using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and now Instagram. It has just gone through the roof for us.” By using targeted advertising on social media platforms, Minty turned a total spend of £422 over
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two-and-a-half-years into more than £90,000 in revenue. He’s created a buzz around the golf course and capitalised to turn it into green fees and memberships. Minty explains:“From a New to Golf campaign we ran last year, we picked up 40 new potential members and 16 of them came through Facebook. I think I placed a £20 advert one week and £25 the week after. It’s very small amounts but to get that return I feel you have to advertise. The perception is that it must cost a fortune to go on Facebook. People, especially golf clubs, aren’t aware that you can put just £10 on. If you wanted to advertise a fourball deal you can put whatever budget you wanted to it. We spent £420. That’s a drop in the ocean compared with the return.” So how can your club follow suit? One of the first things, Minty believes, to recognise is every social media platform is different – and that you must approach each with a different message. “What I see with some clubs is they will set it up so if they post something on Facebook, it will automatically go onto Twitter and Instagram. I think the three of them have different styles,” he says. “The ultimate goal for me is to engage, educate and entertain potential members and visitors and inspire them as opposed to just putting adverts out there all the time. “So it would be doing things like quizzes, funny photos – things that are current and are fun and
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Andrew Minty spent £422 on Facebook and brought in more than £90,000 in revenue. The Langland Bay director of golf tells Steve Carroll how he did it…
interesting in the golfing world. “Every now and then, I will put an advert in there or something regarding the golf club. It generally changes from month to month but they recommend you put these different posts out midweek on a Wednesday afternoon – when people are getting tired and looking forward to playing at the weekend.
“That’s the sort of time you would place an advert or something that would involve a price. “The rest of the week is going to be trying to inspire them – putting videos and various content on golf on Instagram, for example. “Twitter would be a shorter message. It could be something about the new rules that are coming in. Facebook would be very picture orientated, having small stories and looking to inspire golfers with photos of the golf club, quizzes and things like that.” The advertising is subtle mixed in alongside positive and entertaining content about the club. Social media offers a way of
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getting a club’s message across – and controlling how it is done. “We use hashtags and the various ways of getting people to retweet, or share the different posts that have been put on there, and we try to use that more effectively. “Then, when there is a campaign we are doing, we will do an advert, boost the post, change the demographic and use all the buzzwords that are around at the moment – things that are trending. “For us, it would be things like Swansea City football club – things local to us, depending on who were are trying to target.” Much of Minty’s promotional work, whether paid for or not, is done on Facebook. But he is clear not to neglect the other social media channels. Despite that, though, all of Langland Bay’s efforts have one aim in mind: get the customer onto the club website. Minty explains:“Out of all the platforms, the majority of enquiries we get back are through Facebook. We have gained a couple of members through Instagram but the catalyst for me, through all the social media platforms, is to get them to go to the website. “That’s where the majority of the information is. “We’ve picked up a few bookings from Twitter, while Facebook has been absolutely ridiculous. “I am big believer in little and often – keep it going on. “You’ve got that awareness in the market all the time.”
How Minty used social media to create a buzz at Langland Bay
With membership filling up and the club’s various golf programmes starting to find waiting lists, Andrew Minty used Langland Bay’s social media channels to reflect that and whip up a buyer’s frenzy. “People tend to want what they can’t have and the fact that we got the word out there that we were going to have a waiting list brought more membership enquiries,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell a golf club to just go out there and plaster membership adverts all over Facebook. “I would tend to do it where you are telling the public about what your membership is - you’re not giving any prices at that time - you’re telling them about the benefits and what a member can have at the golf club. “You are not putting on monthly medal winners, you’re generally engaging, entertaining and educating those people about what they can have at the golf club. “Then every now and then, you’re throwing in the price or directing them to the website on that price.”
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Data protection and
YOUR MEMBERS
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ED U C AT E | I N FO RM | I N S P I RE
It’s only a few months now before General Data Protection Regulation is enforced. In the final part of our series of articles looking at this subject, employment law specialists Irwin Mitchell consider how it will affect the way you deal with members
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e’ve looked at the general principles and we’ve looked at how it will affect your staff, now it’s time to turn to your customers. How will General Data Protection Regulation alter the way you deal with your members? In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few months, General Data Protection Regulation – otherwise known as GDPR – is a major reform of data protection law that comes into effect on May 25. It will impact every organisation in the UK, including golf clubs, and will become law in the UK regardless of our impending exit from the European Union. A bill, currently going through Westminster, will effectively copy and paste GDPR into UK law ahead of our departure. All businesses that use personal data will have to comply with the new regulations and stiff penalties await for those who don’t. With potential fines of up to 20 million euros, or 4% of annual worldwide turnover, whichever is bigger, levied on firms that aren’t
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up to speed, ignorance is simply not an option. Does the GDPR apply to data we hold about our members? Assuming all of your members are individuals, the GDPR will apply to all data you hold about them, or that can be associated with them, whether this is held electronically or in a paper form that can be searched by a criteria (for example, a roll-a-deck searchable by first letter of surname). This type of data is referred to as “personal data”. Can we continue to contact our members about renewing their membership? The answer to this question will depend on what you told the member when they first signed up to join. If you were clear about how the renewal process works (for example, you told the member that they would receive a reminder letter or email shortly before their membership expires) you should be able to rely on this. The position would, however, be different if you contact members to remind them about renewal after their membership had
already expired. This type of approach is likely to be considered to be marketing, and special rules therefore apply. Can we email newsletters, information, offers and marketing to our members under GDPR? All of these things are ‘unsolicited marketing’ and, under existing rules, you can only send these if your members agree. However, under GDPR, the rules around consent are changing, which will make it much more difficult to obtain and maintain. From May 25, any consent you obtain will need to be: given by clear affirmative action – this means that your members’ must positively give their consent, for instance by checking a box or signing a form. A pre-ticked box, or an opt-out box (for example, “check here if you do not want to receive marketing”) will not comply; informed – the wording that you use must be very clear and spell out to what the member is consenting; specific – you have separate consents for each activity for which you are relying – you
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“GDPR will apply to all data you hold (about members), or that can be associated with them, whether this is held electronically or in a paper form that can be searched by a criteria”
cannot, for instance, bundle a consent for marketing with a consent for disclosure of the individual’s email address to a third party; named – you must name your organisation, or the third party to whom you wish to disclose the data, in the consent. You will not be able to share personal data with a third party on the basis of consent unless they were named in the consent; documented – a consent will not be valid unless you can prove it was collected. You therefore need to keep careful records of how and when consent was given: kept separately from any other terms and conditions (such as your membership agreements); freely given – you cannot make something conditional on consent being given (for example “you cannot become a member unless you consent”); and as easy to withdraw as it was to give – this will likely mean the individual should be able to opt-out by email, post, phone or online, and from each email sent. You will also need to obtain
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separate consents for each electronic communication channel you wish to use, such as email, SMS or telephone. There is an exception to the general rule that consent is required for unsolicited electronic marketing, known as the “soft optin”, where: you have a legitimate interest in sending that electronic marketing, which does not have a disproportionately negative impact on the individual; you collected the individual’s contact details (whether an email address or phone number) during the course of a sale, or a negotiation for sale (e.g. when you sold the membership, or gave the individual a tour of the club); and you are only marketing your own products or services (not those of a third party); To take advantage of the soft opt-in you must have given the individual an opportunity to optout of electronic marketing at the time you obtained their details and on each electronic marketing message you send (e.g. via an unsubscribe link).
We currently share data about our members with third parties. Can we continue to do this? This depends on who the third party is, and why you are sharing it. If you are sharing the personal data so that the third party can send marketing to them, you need consent to do so, and that consent should name that third party specifically (see above). If the third party is a subcontractor of yours, and only uses the data in accordance with your instructions and on your behalf (e.g. a data cleansing company or CRM system provider), they will be a data processor and you may share personal data with them provided that you have a compliant contract in place. If neither of the above applies and you have a legitimate interest in doing so, for instance a potential buyer of your club wishes to carry out due diligence, you may be able to do so provided that such sharing doesn’t have a disproportionately negative effect on the individual. Do we need to update our privacy policy, or if we don’t
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have one, do we need one? If you do not already have a privacy policy, you will certainly need one. If you do already have a privacy policy, it will almost certainly need updating, as the GDPR requires that it contains certain information which is not, under current law, common practice to provide. What else does GDPR mean for our relationship with members? You will need to: understand (a) what categories of data you process about members; (b) why you process that data; (c) what legal justification you have for processing that data; (d) how long you process that data for; (e) who you share that data with; and (f) any non-EU countries you transfer that data to; ensure that you have systems and procedures in place to allow you to (a) respond to subject right requests in the new shorter time limits; and (b) action requests to exercise the new rights (for instance, the right to be forgotten); ensure that you know when the
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right to be forgotten applies (hint: not as often as you might think); ensure that you have appropriate organisational (e.g. policies, procedures and training) and technical (for example - IT systems and security standards) in place to aid compliance; consider whether you need a data protection officer; get acquainted with data protection impact assessments, and when they are required; as well as being aware of when you are required to report personal data security breaches to the regulator and the individuals affected, and also that you have adequate measures in place to ensure you know about data security breaches as soon as possible (and that your employees do not “sit on them”). I need more information, where should I look initially? Your first port of call should be the Information Commissioner’s Office’s GDPR guidance, available at ico.org.uk/for-organisations/ guide-to-the-general-dataprotection-regulation-gdpr/
DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START? Irwin Mitchell can help… We understand that achieving GDPR compliance may seem overwhelming. Every business is unique and so a one size fits all approach won’t work. We have specialist lawyers who are already advising businesses on how to become compliant. We will work with you to understand what your business needs are and agree a pathway to compliance. In view of the potential fines, you need a true specialist to help you navigate through to compliance. General advice in this area will not be enough. GDPR compliance should be treated like a marathon, not a sprint, and compliance requires long term planning and preparation. Get in touch with one of our data protection experts and we’ll be with you every step of the way. Joanne Bone can be contacted on 0113 218 6429 or by emailing joanne.bone@irwinmitchell.com
GCMA.ORG.UK | 57
The GCMA offers a recruitment service for golf clubs to advertise management vacancies, as part of the association’s commitment to providing career opportunities for its members. The GCMA journal and website are trusted channels for golf club management vacancies. ADVERTISING PACKAGES: Magazine adverts include website listing for duration of vacancy ¼ page advert |£850 (+VAT) ½ page advert | £1450 (+VAT) Full page advert | £2450 (+VAT) Website only for duration of vacancy |£750 (+VAT) Non-manager roles: ¼ page advert | £250 (+VAT) e.g. Assistant / Food & Beverage Manager / Clubhouse Manager Includes website advertising for duration of vacancy
Recruitment
■ Targeting a database of skilled candidates ■ Next day website listing and email to all GCMA members ■ Reliable industry knowledge to help with creating your advert ■ Professional support from start to finish ■ Increasing recognition of the importance of GCMA membership HOW TO ADVERTISE: If you wish to advertise a vacancy, please contact Tash Johnson: 01275 391153 | tash@gcma.org.uk
MAGAZINE
GCMA RECRUITMENT KEY FEATURES:
SOCIAL MEDIA
Cradoc Walton Heath Perranporth West Byfleet Maxstoke Park Thurlestone Huntercombe Bramshaw Cooden Beach
WEBSITE
Join these clubs by advertising with GCMA Recruitment Sandy Lodge Frilford Heath Hallamshire Bush Hill Park Filton Stowmarket Radyr East Devon Lamberhurst
Moseley Golf Club, in Birmingham is a private members’ club with a parkland course established in 1892 and designed by Harry Colt. The club has a rich history and is proud of its much admired course. We are at the start of an exciting transformation programme and therefore require an exceptional person to take on the role of Director of Golf. We are looking for a charismatic leader who will be our agent for change. Region: Midland Apply by: 26 February 2018 Salary: Competitive
GCMA.ORG.UK/RECRUITMENT The Berkshire Boyce Hill Berkhamsted Carnoustie Beaconsfield Wakefield Littlehampton Sandiway Wimbledon Park
MOSELEY GC ::: DIRECTOR OF GOLF
From the
HELPDESK This month: Joining the club you work for, statutory training and...tee time intervals Is there anything to prevent me being a member of the club I am secretary for? If you are an employee we would definitely advise against it. There could be several conflicts of interest, not least when dealing with voting at General Meetings. It is normal for clubs to allow their secretary/manager all the same rights as members, but without a vote, thus removing the need to join. This includes the ability to play in club competitions. It is in the club’s interest for you to see everything from both sides. I am wondering if there is a document in the library that highlights all statutory training that all team members should have on file. I’m thinking fire, manual handling, COSHH etc... There is no definitive answer on this as your duty as an employer is to provide whatever information, instruction, training and supervision as is necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of your employees. Therefore, any training needs to be relevant to the staff members’ duties and will vary from department to department. However, there are certain subjects where you could argue that all
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staff should have training such as: • awareness of the club’s health & safety policy – all staff • awareness of the control of substances hazardous to health (COSHH) regulations – all staff but department specific • when and how to report injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations (RIDDOR) – all staff • fire safety awareness training – all staff • first aid – selected staff dependant on current regulations • manual handling training – most staff, dependant on duties • basic risk assessment training – all staff • annual updates in essential areas of fire safety and manual handling – as above • food hygiene or food safety awareness training – bar and catering staff and managers • safeguarding children training – all staff who deal with children. We use tee time intervals of 10 minutes for fourballs and eight minutes for threeballs. Are there official times or recommendations? The R&A have published the following with regard to starting intervals... Allow eight minute starting intervals for two-balls, 10 or 11
minutes for three-balls and 12 minutes for fourballs. Ensure players start on time to help the flow of groups around the course. Incorporate additional gaps between starting times to allow any delays to clear. For example, give an additional five minutes between tee times once every hour or so. Consider implementing a pace of play policy. Do not overload the course by using short starting intervals – this simply results in players being on the course longer. Do you have some definitive guide lines for disabled people using buggies on the course when conditions are so poor that buggies need to stay on the paths? The best place to go for this is to the policy drawn up by England Golf and NGCAA which can be found on England Golf’s website under traffic policy. There is a lot of good stuff there on the use of buggies by the disabled. It is also bang up to date with current legislation.
An online helpdesk offers an advisory service. Visit gcma.org. uk/members.
GCMA.ORG.UK | 59
GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
Meet the
MANAGER
Sponsor of the 2017 GCMA Manager of the Year award
Marie Taylor talks to Richard Odell, general manager of Sherwood Forest
Sherwood Forest
H
ow did you get into golf club management? I started my career by turning professional at 16. I was PGA qualified at 18 - as the youngest person to ever qualify, so I believe. Following an ‘A’ grade in the teaching module, I decided to head to Europe for some experience (and money) and landed in Germany where I had a
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few different positions. But for the last five years I was head professional at Dortmund GC between 1995 and 2000 and latterly became the head pro and secretary too for the last three years. Returning to the UK, I was asked to manage the golf academy section of Branston G&CC, in Staffordshire - a new 9 hole academy course, driving range and pro shop. Eventually I became
director of golf at Branston, in 2009, but not until after spending seven years helping enrol over 85,000 children in 550 clubs onto the Young Masters Golf coaching scheme. I finally got my first general manger’s position at Sherwood Forest in late 2016. What are the challenges? Sherwood has had a few general manager changes over the past
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few years so consistency was needed when I got here. Now a year on, the challenge is to provide direction in what is challenging times for golf. The course and reputation are excellent. Being ranked 84th in the top 100 clubs in the UK and Ireland attracts a certain type of visiting clientele. But, like most clubs, three quarters of our takings are membership subs and so is key to make sure the members get value for money and we keep a surplus of new members coming in. For convenience of the members, and in the interests of staff efficiency, we are upgrading the systems across the club to continue moving the club forward. One project underway is a new state of the art, 350-yard amphitheatre driving range and short game being built ready for spring 2019. The car park is also being extended too, which will help us accommodate the Brabazon Trophy in August 2020. This project will take the club ranking to another level. What innovations of yours have delivered success? We tested a membership promotion this winter. It was a trial subscription for three months. Trial subscribers paid the same standard rates but it allowed us to show off the course to them. It gives us the opportunity not only for them to have a look at us
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but us to make sure this was the correct club for them. We permitted them to play in competitions like normal members and, with us being a very well drained sand base course, the result so far is that we’ve refilled our memberships and hope to have a waiting list again soon.
“The key is to make sure members get value for money and we keep a surplus of new members coming in”
improve, I’d like to host the bigger and more prestigious competitions. I’d also like to get the Open Championship qualifiers back. Have you played with anyone famous or have a proudest golfing moment? Hmm, I played in the last round of the European Tour qualifying school in 1993 with Andrew Coltart and Gary Nicklaus (Jack’s son). Back in 1992, I won a car in a Golf Rules Competition. It was a Volvo 945 Estate that I had to pick up from Wentworth. However, my proudest career moment has to be being offered the position as general manager here at Sherwood Forest.
Richard Odell
What are your aspirations for Sherwood Forest and where are the opportunities? I’d like to see us move up the rankings and, as our facilities
Get In Touch To contact Sherwood Forest, visit sherwoodforestgolfclub.co.uk
GCMA.ORG.UK | 61
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To advertise in The Golf Club Manager, download a media pack at gcma.org.uk/mediapack or contact: Tash Johnson Business Development Manager e: tash@gcma.org.uk t: 07982 765826
ED U C AT E | I N FO RM | I N S P I RE
From the
REGIONS SOUTH WEST Christmas get-together Tuesday, December 5 Weston-super-Mare More than 30 players got into the festive spirit at a Christmas get together at Weston-super-Mare. The event, the idea of 2010 regional captain John Keight, is played on a bi-annual basis at either Weston-super-Mare or Burnham & Berrow. Launceston’s Alan Creber, Kingsdown’s Gareth Morgan and Vic Tofts were the winners with 79 points. NORTH WEST Christmas meeting Wednesday, December 13 Houghwood Peter Turner and his team at Houghwood hosted the region’s Christmas meeting. The first of the presentations was given by Steve Oakes and Ceri Davies, of Peninsula, on employment law and health and safety. The presenters’ enthusiasm and knowledge left everyone present with a lot of food for thought. Bryan Webb, representing the region’s education partner Circle Golf, gave the second presentation. Regardless of which provider clubs were using, he provided tips and guidance on what should be looked for in an insurance policy to ensure clubs were adequately
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protected should a claim be made.
Regional Managers
SOUTHERN AGM and business meeting Wednesday, January 10 Littlehampton
Full details at gcma.org.uk/ regions
With the implementation date looming, a good turnout at Littlehampton listened intently to presentations on GDPR from Matthew Armsby and Mark Hunt on sustainable turf management. With legislation constantly reducing the number of approved chemicals, alternative turf and disease management methods were also tabled and discussed. There will be some interesting discussions to be had between club and course managers in the near future. A number of local course managers were able to attend and listen to Mark’s presentation first hand. The open forum saw a lively debate on the implementation of, and the new upper limits for, handicaps and gave some useful and varied approaches to take away and consider. The imminent change in the law on charging for the use of credit cards was also discussed. National captain Howard Williams assisted in the presentations to Joan Raffety, the outgoing regional manager who has led Southern superbly for the last six years. James Maclean, of Bognor Regis, was confirmed as the new captain.
East Anglia
Chiltern & Home Counties
Martin Bennet Gary Smith East Midlands
Rod Savage London & Home Counties
Maureen Brooker Midland
Rob Wormstone Norfolk
John Barnard North West
Neil Annandale Northern
Terry Minett Northern Ireland
Jim Cullen Scotland
Bernard Flockhart South East
John Edgington South West
Karen Drake Southern
Paul Gaylor Wales
Mike Rees Wessex
Alex Taylor Yorkshire
Cameron Dawson
GCMA.ORG.UK | 63
GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
My success story...
MIKE TIMSON In the wake of a crushing economic blow to his region, Newmachar’s Mike Timson found a way to increase his junior membership five fold. Marie Taylor reports…
W
HEN Mike Timson came into Newmachar and found a club on the brink of a crisis, he had to get innovative…and quickly. Two months before he took the reins as operations director at the Aberdeen club, wide ranging redundancies in the oil industry had left their massive mark almost overnight. 100 members gone. Muchneeded revenue lost. And to make matters worse, corporate golf had become a thing of the past. Talk about a baptism of fire for Timson, who arrived to lead a team of 29 staff in May last year. But he wasn’t cowed by the challenge. Instead, he did something remarkable about growing their membership. “It’s about planting acorns,” said Timson, who needed a way to create business against a bleak economic backdrop. He turned his attention to junior membership. It’s a path many clubs have tried to tread, but with little success. Newmachar, though, went from just 20 junior members to more than 100 in only seven months.
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So how did he succeed where so many others have failed? Firstly, he recruited a new team that would specifically deliver a five-week training programme in local schools. Every child was given a handicap and, after completing the five hour course, the most improved child from each class was given a free membership. With Sport Scotland required to ensure every Primary 7 (10-11-year-olds) child had some access to golf coaching as part of their bid to secure funding for the Ryder Cup, Newmachar really embraced the chance. Key to their effort was turning the traditional view of what coaching should be on its head. “Golf is too coachy,” Timson added.“We give them a different experience. It’s all about the fun.”
“We have invested around £1,500 and our return to the business has been in the region of £20,000. The content is fun”
A Pink Panther-style video and wrap around services were provided for schools who took a trip to the club after the training. “The pro shop wage bill is £80,000 a year. While making £2,000 a month from junior coaching, this doesn’t cover the wage bill. “We are, however, planting acorns so that, eventually, those juniors will come back. The parents are then presented with the opportunity to get into golf but the approach is fresh and unlike traditional approaches.” Timson hasn’t finished there, though. By the spring, a new virtual reality driving range will be in operation. Trackman and other software will provide an immersive experience for juniors and adults alike. He’s got the backing of the club
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Newmachar
committee and has also secured sponsorship from St James’s Place Wealth Management and Foregolf, as well as a health food company. A former construction manager, and an advanced PGA professional, Timson enjoyed previous spells at King’s Lynn and Belton Park – where he had previous success employing his methods. “At Belton Park, I introduced 100 new junior members and 56 full members within 18 months,” he said. He seems to have found a home at Newmachar, where the club are holding their own – despite green fees of between £65 and £85 and a membership fee of £800 – thanks to a transformed committee culture and a strong family atmosphere. Timson added:“Construction of the new driving range starts in
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March and should be finished in 12 weeks. On the same date, a new F&B franchise will be in place with a new full licence so that we can take weddings and wakes.” A part of Timson’s successful strategy to increase membership has been Newmachar’s focus on social media. “Our best ROI is Facebook where, in the last seven months, the club’s activity on these platforms has increased,” he explained. “We have invested around £1,500 and our return to the business has been in the region of £20,000. “The content is fun stuff only. There’s no heavy selling. My assistant and I post engaging content across all social media and we have a 12 month plan covering green fees, membership, professionals, course and positive stories.”
With social media views having increased by around 900 per cent and video rights having been sold to corporate sponsors for product placements, Timson’s social media revolution is self-financing. Last month, the club also launched a new website where membership can be bought online. He said:“We’ve agreed a plan with the committee and staff for the next 12 months on the core topics and we’ve asked the team to come up with content. “This way, we keep it fresh and interesting – and we track performance.” We want to hear all about the success stories at your club. Get in touch by emailing s.carroll@sportspub.co.uk
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GCMA | INDUSTRY | CAREERS | EDUCATION | REGIONAL
December 2017
STATS UK&I 5,433 2,215
Total competitions recorded
GENTS:
3,912
LADIES:
1,521
Hole in ones in qualifying events throughout 2017
183 Hole in one watches not claimed throughout 2017. They can be claimed with the code at h1club.co.uk.
LOWEST EXACT HANDICAP
Gents
Ladies
-5.4 -5.3 20,274 total HowDidiDo Order of Merit sign ups for 2018
141,997 total rounds of golf recorded
1,142 eagles
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50,869 birdies
461,009
Stats provided by HowdidIdo.com
pars
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GREAT BEERS
DESERVE GREAT SPORTS
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