Here’s the top three things I learnt while editing The Golf Business in September

From golf courses being the location for air ambulances to world record attempts for par five holes, the editor of The Golf Business, Alistair Dunsmuir, charts his monthly top three trends.

Speedgolf is not going away

Two English golf clubs have seen two world record attempts for how quickly golfers can complete a par five hole, with one successful, in the last few weeks.

Watch this amazing video of a golfer completing a par 5 hole

The video of Steve Jeffs breaking the record in one minute and 50 seconds can be seen on The Golf Business website and it does the exact opposite of what dress codes do: It makes golf look like a cutting edge activity.

Slovakia seems an interesting place to play golf

The country has become the first in the history of Europe to report that more women than men are members of its golf clubs.

Just to put that into perspective, in England 80 per cent of golf club members are adult men and 13 per cent are adult women. Even in Germany, which has the highest female participation in Europe, 59 per cent of club members are adult male, with 35 per cent adult female. In Slovakia the figures are 42 per cent male, 45 per cent female.

There has never been a European country which has almost identical male and female golf participation until now, so what is going on in Slovakia?

Good PR can come from an unlikely source

On the face of it, South Essex College relocating its campus shouldn’t be an issue that has much impact on the golf industry, but it was the location of the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance helipad.

Stepping in to save the day, and potentially some lives, is Basildon Golf Course, which has offered an unused bit of its land to be the helipad.

The result: Some fantastic publicity for the club and a sense of goodwill about the facility among the local community.