A greenkeepers' perspective on the golf industry

This article was featured in the Spring 2018 edition of Your Course magazine

What happens when you get greenkeepers around a table and ask them to speak freely on some of the big issues in their jobs? We gathered a trio of turf managers to do just that.

Do greenkeepers really want to give presentations to members? How do they find dealing with committees and golfers? Who should have priority on the course?

 

Do you have to be a golfer to be a greenkeeper?

Chris Sheehan: It would help if you could play golf, certainly, but I don’t think it’s essential. There’s some great greenkeepers out there who don’t play golf at all.

James Parker: I would concur with that. To some degree I think it's important to play the game, to understand the playability of it. For me, when you play the game, you understand what golfers look for when we play. But I would also agree that there are some very good greenkeepers out there who don't play the game. My course manager, where I was a deputy, doesn't play the game and does an absolutely outstanding job.

Jack Hetherington: It does help, but I also believe you don't have to be a golfer. If you're passionate about something, you want to know everything about that, so you will learn everything you can about golf as well as the greenkeeping aspect. I am not a great golfer, but because I am passionate about my job, I want to learn about that aspect of it as well.

JP: Different things drive different people. When I came into the industry I was driven by the fact I played golf first. That was the first thing for me and my judge of whether the golf course was good was if I had that itch to take the clubs out on a Friday evening and play. That's what it is for me.

CS: It's especially about learning the rules of the game of golf. That's essential. If you've got a big competition coming up, your course has got to be right.

JP: Socially within the club structure, it can also help. A lot of the things you'll be invited to within the club structure revolve around golf. So, if you are invited to play captain's day or the open, it does help you integrate socially.

JH: I used to work at Ponteland and a member of the team was a really good golfer. He was well respected among the members because he was a plus two handicapper and what he said carried a lot of weight because of the fact he was a good golfer. It comes back to the social aspect.

CS: Some golf clubs look to the pro for advice on the course, when actually, just because he's a good golfer doesn't mean he necessarily knows anything about greenkeeping.

Does that customer facing role come easy to you?

CS: it comes easily enough to certain people. There are still a lot of greenkeepers out there where it doesn't and they are not happy speaking in front of members or even a small group of people. They struggle. Obviously, BIGGA through its education programmes can help with that.

JH: I am much better on a one to one level, as opposed to giving a presentation. But I realise it is going that way. I am trying to throw myself into that environment so I will be better at my job. To be good in this role, you have to keep adapting and you have to keep up with the way it's going.

JP: I love presenting. It's one of the best parts of the job. I love educating our members on why we do what we do. I believe an educated member is a good member. At Pannal we've started doing presentations and social media because that's what we believe in. I also believe that we have quite a lot of big projects that need doing. A lot of this would meet quite strong member resistance, so I have to sell them a dream of what their cause could be like

CS: It does become difficult at times when you have a vision or you see the way the weather is going. For instance, at West Derby, I said some years back, the biggest problem we are going to have is drainage. Sometimes the drainage gets lost in the bigger picture when a committee wants tees and greens rebuilding. Instead, you may convince them something needs to be done, but then you have a change of committee and new captains, and it goes out the window. Your greenkeeper is your consistency. He knows where he wants the course to be in three, five- and 10-years’ time.

JP: The structure of golf courses is becoming outdated. I would say you need a level of consistency and you don't always have that because committees change every few years. You have got new ideas coming from left, right and centre. That makes it very hard, as Chris talked about, to get a focused plan for any long term period. Within that, it's very difficult for a committee to see past the emotive side. A lot of people are emotional about their golf club and they feel attached to their golf club, rightly so. But when you get outside of that, if you look at general managers, boards and proprietary owned clubs, they can see the actual business side. They can take the emotive out of it and see that for the good of the golf club, we need to do this and it costs this.

Who should have priority golfers or greenkeepers?

Cs: Most golf clubs that I know, if not all of them, have a policy where the greenstaff have priority at all times. But despite this, greenkeepers sometimes still find themselves in the firing line. That is the worst scenario and it not only hurts them from a mental point of view, it hurts them if the golf ball hits them. There have been many instances of balls hitting greenkeepers and causing serious injury. It has happened to me. And when you go up to the golfer and say, ‘did you not see me?’ they say, ‘Oh no, I didn't’ or ‘I didn't think I'd hit it that far’. When you are on a machine, you can't hear them shouting ‘fore’. As far as I am concerned, don't play while the greenkeeper is on the green.

JH: Greenkeepers should have priority at all times. It's easier for me to educate my three members of staff than it is to educate all of my members and say, right, you must give way at this time, but at this time we'll give way. It's easier for golfers to give way at all times and for me to educate my staff when it's acceptable to make them wait and when it's not. If you've got somebody cutting a green, then golfers should wait. Conversely, if the greenkeeper feels the task is going to take too long and hold up play, then by all means, move to the side and let people play through. The difficulty is that the more we squeeze our tee sheets, which every club is doing now as we want to cram on as much golf as we can, then the fourball who are stood in the middle of the fairway feels under the same pressure as the greenkeeper on the green - they've got people on the tee behind them wanting to play. It's difficult from all points of view, but as long as the member and the greenkeeper can work together, I don't really see that it should be a huge issue.

CS: We had a health and safety expert in and he said, ‘I think all the greenstaff should wear a helmet and high-vis jackets when they are working on the golf course so the golfers can see them and they know it's a member of the greenstaff’. I said, ‘Well, don't you think the same applies to visitors or any member?’

JP: We had a health and safety advisor that said completely the opposite I mentioned about bump caps and high vis - I'm firmly against it - and he said he thinks it makes golfers more lazy if you give out bump caps and high vis, and the beauty of not wearing them is that golfers should then be on the lookout for greenkeepers. Safety gear doesn't stop golfers from hitting their ball, because they just say ‘he's got a bump cap on, I'm going to hit it anyway, he'll be fine’.

CS: You can literally kill somebody with a golf ball. There have been serious injuries that have been caused, and our fear is that it won't be long before somebody gets killed.