The top trends of 2013

30. People are realising the importance of the weather forecast on participation

There’s no doubt that the weather plays a major role in golf participation – that became abundantly clear when involvement plummeted during the wet summer of 2012.

However, many in the game believe the weather forecast is even more important than what the actual weather turns out to be.

Epping Golf Course collated daily information on morning BBC Radio 4 weather forecasts, what the actual weather turned out to be for that day, the number of rounds played that day and the number of rounds that had been expected to be played. The club found that when a forecaster gives unfair prominence to colder temperatures and rain, golf clubs’ profits for the next 24 hours tend to drop.

The club presented the results to two MPs in 2013, who both contacted the Met Office to say they supported calls to be less negative when delivering weather forecasts. Several club managers and county secretaries have since also said they are in agreement with this approach.

29. Greenkeepers are getting fed up with golfers

More than nine in ten greenkeepers believe that golfers should pass a test on course care before they are allowed to play the game, as is the case in some European countries.

The Today’s Golfer survey found that greenkeepers are now fed up with golfers leaving the course in an inappropriate state.

More than half of them, 57 per cent, said golfers are bad or very bad at repairing pitch marks and three-quarters of the respondents said that, despite the bad course management practice of some golfers, a lack of investment in course management by the club and issues out of their control such as heavy rain or course geology, golfers still blame them if the course does not meet their expectations.

28. Clubs are investing more in social media

The scramble to join Twitter and Facebook might now be over, but clubs still have a long way to go when it comes to social media.

Recognising this, BGL Golf, one of the UK’s leading course owner-operators, appointed a full-time ‘online marketing executive’ to work closely with the group’s 10 golf clubs to develop social media campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube in 2013.

The importance of social media to golf clubs has reached such an extent that John Hassells, legal adviser to the National Golf Clubs’ Advisory Association (NGCAA), said: “The biggest thing a golf club should do to protect itself is to implement a social media policy.”

But while some clubs are investing big in digital technology, others probably ought to.

A poll of 245 golf club managers by The Golf Club Secretary found that just 38 percent believed that their club’s website was responsive on a smartphone or tablet screen – in that the content automatically resizes itself to suit a smaller screen. But worse than that – when those managers’ websites were analysed, it turned out that approximately two-thirds of them were not, in fact, responsive at all.

27. Greenkeepers have been badly hit by the financial downturn

While we discovered in 2013 that American head greenkeepers earn, on average, more than £53,000 per year, the story is very different for their British counterparts.

Perennial, a national charity which helps people who work in horticulture, said that there was a 25 percent increase in the number of debt clients it dealt with in 2012 compared with 2011. And the category that was particularly on the increase was greenkeepers, which represents more than 12 percent of all the people who came to it.

26. Discount websites are dividing opinion

The issue of using discount websites like Groupon and AmazonLocal to market and sell green fees is one of the most divisive topics in golf club management.

On the one hand clubs like The Kent and Surrey Golf Club have said the sites have kept their weekends busy and customers tend to spend extra in the bar and pro shop while at the venue.

On the other, clubs likes Chalgrave Manor Golf Club have said that the sites devalue the golf product, as the green fees are reduced, often by about 50 percent and then the revenue is still split between the club and the reseller, and threaten to take the club’s power over its tee times away.

Things got so bad that in 2013 the European Golf Course Owners’ Association (EGCOA) issued 22 guidelines to all European golf clubs for dealing with third party tee time resellers, including calling for contracts to be signed between the two parties.

Groupon responded by saying that it does not dictate to golf clubs, but instead works with them to fill up unused tee times, and always agrees contracts with clients anyway.