History Repeating

After the friendly match against Brancepeth four of us went down to Woodhall Spa, the home of “England Golf” (the new name of the English Golf Union) and one of the top 50 courses in the world, The Hotchkin Course.

The main objective was to play golf while staying dry, but we also thought we’d speak to the Club Services man at England Golf to benefit from his experience regarding our re-write of the rules and our fundraising for the clubhouse development. Unfortunately he’d been called away “unexpectedly”. I’m sure it’s nothing personal, and we can speak to them by phone, but it’s a shame not to have got inside the inner sanctum.

On the golf course, our objective was a bit harder: rain swept across the country for the two days we were there. The good news was that everyone else stayed away from golf on the Monday, which meant we had a world top 50 golf course to ourselves. The bad news was that we got wet. But not too wet.

There was also some compensation for Mike Robinson and I as we were heavily beaten by John Southern and Keith Whitfield: a chance to see why Harry Vardon was such a good player. Keith had absorbed pictures of Vardon’s putting in a history of the course, and decided to putt in that manner. It worked: pretty much everything sank.

As golf club members we get a discounted rate to play the course; it's a long way to Woodhall Spa but it's an enjoyable place to visit.

Another benefit of the course was the opportunity to admire their heather reclamation work, in some cases at very close quarters, and also the scale of some of their gorse: some had become so large but straggly that you could walk around underneath their canopy. Why would you? Looking for balls of course. This is important: I was told a couple of weeks ago that the trouble with committee members is that they lose their balls when they join the committee. I'm pleased to say I found five in one lot of gorse bushes, and three in the adjacent heather.

A Vardon quote: "A great deal of unnecessarily bad golf is played in this world."

And a link to HistoryRepeating, a great song performed by Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads.

Early days

September is a busy month for both the course and the new captain.

For the course, it’s one of the top two months for visitor income and there are also (including the last week of August) a number of important events: every year, Captain’s Day, the pro-am, two Open competitions, and a couple of friendly matches; this year we also co-hosted the Swedish Golf Secretaries annual match against the English golf club managers’ association and we host the County Salver at the end of the month. And we saw the important final match of the Ladies’ Northumberland County Shield league against Ponteland where our 7.5/0.5 win guaranteed we won the shield. All this is explains why we do not to do the aeration and treatment of the greens at the best time of the year to do it (mid August/September): there’s just too much going on which benefits the club.But as part of further improving the quality of the course we are going to think about doing this some of this work in August at least for some of the greens.

The men’s captain has to hit the ground running; in addition to the points above he also has to deal with the Lady Mayoresses’ competition. Trevor hit the ground a great deal better than Keith or I in terms of weather; most of the days since he took over have been the best of the year so far with in particular a dry and calm Captain’s Day and a successful pro-am and friendly against Ponteland (the latter successful only in the sense that people enjoyed it). Fiona, the ladies' captain, oversaw the culmination of Alison’s season with the aforementioned win against Ponteland meaning all three ladies teams won their respective leagues. This is a fantastic achievement for the club. I’m not sure how I can take credit for it but I’m sure I’ll try.

The pro-am had a bit of a frisson this year, with the added celebration of Keith Whitfield's 70th (hard to believe) birthday with the clubhouse decorated to show him in a new light. He did eventually get his cake cut.

Hello again

I finished off my last blog with Jeremy Clarkson’s quote about golf club captains being halfwits, hated by their family at a molecular level and so on.  I did modify his quote a bit: he actually talked about chairmen not captains. I’ll leave it to others to judge whether he’s right. I am of course grateful to be Bamburgh Castle Golf Club’s chairman; to be precise, chairman of the committee, but when people have congratulated me on the appointment I’ve downplayed it because it seems to me that there will be many hassles to offset the undoubted benefit of the parking space. I respect John Southern even more now for staying sane while people dumped their problems on him: I’ve only done the job for a couple of weeks and already I think the best solution is not to visit the club when anyone else is there.

Not everyone will know that each year, after the AGM, the elected committee disappears into the small lobby by Mike’s office. Under the chairmanship of that year’s captain it decides who should chair the committee for the following year and who should do what jobs. This year, no-one else wanted the job, hence me. The good news is that at the same time we managed to solve one of the biggest problems for any treasurer (of anything): how do you get anyone to take over? Ian Brown agreed to take over and to chair the finance committee. This role will be critical over the next couple of years as we finalise the clubhouse development: equally critical is the clubhouse development committee itself, which will now be a formal sub-committee: Malcolm Cresswell who, with Ali Gilhome, embodies experience of this type of project will be the chairman. At the same time we have to keep the usual business of the club going; the Green, Competitions/Handicap and House committees will benefit from the continuity of John Cairns, Keith Whitfield and Tony Cawthorn continuing as the respective chairmen.

The key to the office bequeathed to me by John Southern

Anyway, I’ve decided to restart a blog as a less formal means of communicating what’s going on at the club. We already have the occasional newsletters and the annual report; we post odd things like quarterly accounts on the web and we are going to publish committee minutes (occasionally edited for personal or very commercial issues) but I think there’s also scope for a more personal interpretation. As you can see from the earlier paragraphs it won’t always be that interesting and unlike my previous blog it’ll be more focused on the club in general rather than the golf. But my belief is that golf is meant to be fun and we are extraordinarily lucky to be members of a club like Bamburgh so I hope it will always be positive.