How better governance improves golf club culture

This feature was first published in the Autumn 2019 edition of Your Course

In a golf club setting, governance refers to the relationship between the management committee, members, staff and any other stakeholders.

The concept seems simple and yet when it fails, the result for a golf club can be catastrophic. Sadly, that’s a scenario we see all too often in clubs today, putting the health of clubs and the livelihoods of those who rely upon that income at risk.

BIGGA Chief Executive Officer Jim Croxton asks whether your club is operating as effectively as it could be, and are you missing out as a result?

 

Golf is a sport that has grown organically over the years and so there are massive variations in the way clubs and golf facilities go about their business. That has many positives as it means there is a diverse market with many types of facilities, but it can also have a significant impact on the staff who run those the clubs.

Quite simply, the most successful clubs are also the best managed. They are the ones where the club itself has a clear vision for what they’re trying to achieve; they understand their market and what level the golf course is at and then they empower their staff to manage to those goals.

Unfortunately, that virtuous circle is broken all too often by the board and the customers getting together and interfering with that process. A decline in golfer numbers and the economic downturn has seen a number of clubs facing uncertain times financially, the result being that golf clubs are now far more reactive to the customer.

So often we see that committee-run clubs operate in a way that doesn’t necessarily make good business sense. We see unsettled committees and no long-term business plan, which can have a significant impact on staff. Course policy documents are more common than they were 10 years ago, but unfortunately, we see many incidents a new committee throwing out a course policy document because they don’t like what it says.

When a customer complains about one aspect of the course, too often management takes it out on the greenkeepers. As such, the BIGGA team is dealing with dozens of cases each year where the greenkeepers have been unfairly treated. We’re seeing a number of cases going to tribunal or the course manager being made redundant in spurious circumstances. But even more sadly, we’re seeing too many greenkeepers who are suffering with significant stress and the ensuing mental health problems that brings.

We’ve heard of far too many instances where people have gone on to a committee with the manifesto of getting rid of a certain member of staff who they taken a personal disliking to. Most of the time that approach ends up costing the club money, either in a tribunal or in legal fees or in members of staff being off sick because the stress is too much to bear. If the club had actually worked with their staff to agree common goals, it would have been for the benefit of the club, not to the detriment.

A good committee structure will see respect given from both sides. The committee should receive regular reports from the greens staff, which will ensure they well-informed. Rather than just being whingers and moaners, they will then make data-driven decisions in line with the long-term plan of the business. 

The greenkeepers have got to be respectful of the part committee members play because they’re giving up their free time to be a part of the management of the club. But equally, when it gets personal, that needs to be stopped.

In our experience, this situation is significantly more prevalent in private members’ clubs than it is proprietary clubs. Proprietary clubs, generally speaking, have an individual or small group who have a very clear sense of how the business needs to work and the resources the greenkeeper needs for that to be achievable. The greenkeeper may be under significant pressure to achieve, but there’s a consistency of management that means they have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.

The biggest challenge our members face is where a new committee has come in and what is expected of them has changed overnight. That’s very difficult to deal with.

The simplest solution to this is for the golf club to have a well-researched, long term plan wherein everyone understands what they’re trying to achieve as a golf club. The analogy I always use is setting the menu in the clubhouse. Nobody ever says to the chef, just go write a menu, decide what to sell and what to set the prices at. But equally the board doesn’t sit in a room without any consultation with a food and beverage expert and write a menu, set prices and say ‘cook that’. It’s always a collaborative piece of work.

It’s the same out on the course, where the course manager or head greenkeeper and other members of the team should be involved, along with an appropriate selection of golfers and any data you have gathered. Then the direction you intend to take on the course can be agreed and written in to tablets of stone, so it can’t just be thrown out or abandoned on a whim.

The greens convener has a number of critical roles in that process. One is to act as the filter or the buffer between the customer and practitioner so the greenkeeper doesn’t have to face every golfer’s piece of feedback. If you have 500 golfers and you agree on one direction, there’s going to be a huge amount of people who don’t get the course exactly as they would like it, so it isn’t fair to expose the greenkeeper to all those comments.

Secondly, they’ve got to be that communicator who comes to the greenkeeping team with general, structured feedback from the membership and discusses with them ways they can develop the course offering, because in the end you have got to have happy customers.

The flip side is also true and the greens chairman must have spoken to the greenkeepers about what’s happening on the course, such as how recent weather has impacted what they’ve been able to achieve, and pass this information to the rest of the committee.

For the golfer who isn’t on the committee, we simply ask that they take a level of personal ownership around the course itself. Standards of golf course etiquette have dropped over the years, in terms of raking bunkers, fixing divots and pitchmarks and taking care of the course.

I think the big thing any golfer can and should do is ask intelligent questions of your club. There’s a subtle difference between ‘the greens are too slow’ and ‘why are the greens slower than they were last week?’ The golf course is a living, breathing thing and how it plays will change depending upon various factors throughout the year. Asking the right questions and being prepared to listen to the answers is absolutely key.

We’re asking our members to change how they act to suit the new environment as well. Course managers should understand where they fit in to the long-term plan of the budget, why their budget is what it is and what level they should be aiming at on the course. Every single greenkeeper that I’ve ever come across wants more budget because they know that with an extra 10% they could be doing so much more. But they need to understand where the club fits in to its market and how that impacts what they should be achieving. As part of our training programmes, we offer a large amount of education that looks at how to engage with a committee, write a report, input data into spreadsheets and then present them in a positive way.

However, so little of that comes naturally to greenkeepers. Our members are comfortable out on the course and so if you ask them to present a report in the clubhouse, you’re taking them out of their comfort zone. I would always advise the managers and committee members to spend some time in the greenkeepers’ environment. Reach out to them and build that relationship and then they’ll be much more comfortable when you move indoors and ask them to participate in meetings. By visiting the maintenance facility and understanding what the greenkeepers are working with, you’ll have a better appreciation of what they are or aren’t able to achieve out on the course.

I’m certain that greater understanding and mutual respect are the two key factors towards a club thriving or becoming just another sad statistic.