NEWS
Sentosa Golf Club is widely respected as one of the world’s greatest golf clubs. It is also home to two world-class championship golf courses – The Tanjong and The Serapong – with the latter recently being voted ‘Singapore’s Best Golf Course’ for the second year in a row at the World Golf Awards. The Serapong re-opened in December after an extensive renovations project, led by the club’s General Manager & Director of Agronomy, Andrew Johnston, to maintain and rejuvenate the world-class standards the course has set in recent years. The club is also one of the world’s leading environmentally sustainable golf clubs, having implemented a number of initiatives through its two ground-breaking campaigns, #KeepItGreen and GAME ON, and were named the ‘World’s Best Eco-Friendly Golf Facility’ at last year’s World Golf Awards. We sat down with Andrew Johnston to discuss what makes Sentosa’s environmental vision so unique and how they managed to maintain it throughout The Serapong’s renovations. Sentosa Golf Club was named the ‘World’s Best Eco-Friendly Golf Facility’ in the latest edition of the World Golf Awards. What does it mean to the club to receive this accolade? It is an exciting, proud and humbling achievement to be recognised as the ‘World’s Best Eco-Friendly Golf Facility’ by our fellow industry professionals and golf consumers throughout the world. There is nothing more critical and important than taking care of the world we live in, and the culture we have created and implemented at the club, from our committee all the way down to our guests, is based around our environmental sustainability vision for the future.
Top: Fairways on The Serapong have been rejuvenated with grading adjustments and improved drainage. Below: The newly renovated 5th hole on The Serapong
Tell us a bit more about the sustainability work that the club has undertaken in the last 12 months? With everything that has happened in the world over the past year, it definitely would have been the year that we would all look back on and wish we could hit the reset button. However, for the team at Sentosa, it was another ground-breaking year in terms of our sustainability work at the club.
Superb in Singapore In July, we became a full-time member of GEO Foundation, as well as the first golf club to join the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, which looks to guide the sports industry on a path to achieving climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement. We also set out plans for the redevelopment of our herb garden, as well as building and installing electric car charging points through a partnership with Porsche. The development of a floating solar farm is also another initiative that is on our agenda for 2021 and more news will be announced on these initiatives soon. The Circuit Breaker left us in an awkward position, but we continued to press forward with our plans. The most important thing for the club moving forward now is to establish our carbon footprint number, so that we can work towards becoming carbon zero.
Are there any further sustainability projects that you are looking to implemented in the near future? And what is the ultimate goal in terms of sustainability for SGC? We hope to convert our energy source from brown to green, as well as develop the carbon free rounds of golf. This involves mapping out each of our golfers at Sentosa and adding one dollar to their games, so that it can be used to purchase local Renewable Energy Certificate. The club also aims to develop its relationship with GEO Foundation by becoming GEO Certified, a comprehensive modern certification that recognises facilities around the world for their outstanding and ongoing commitment to sustainable golf. The Serapong was also named ‘Singapore’s Best Golf Course’ for the second year in a row. How do you manage to maintain such high-quality course conditions, while dedicating so much attention to a sustainability agenda? We are lucky to have such a strong team who are dedicated to achieving excellence day in day out on The Serapong. While it was named ‘Singapore’s Best Golf Course’ for the second year in a row, the course has also previously collected the same accolade at the Asian Golf Awards for 16 years in a row, as well as being named Number One for 18 years out of the past two decades in Golf Digest’s Singapore rankings. Our sustainability agenda is part of the club culture, so all the staff and team have bought into it ever since we launched our Keep it Green campaign in 2018. In fact, Keep it Green has become a way of life at the club now. As an example, every
16 | Turf Matters | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021