Golf club operator to invest in five venues

An operator of six golf clubs in England has said it will invest, on average six figure amounts, in five of them due to the increased popularity of the game at the moment.

Glendale Golf will invest £700,000 in the improvement projects in 2021.

The organisation says it welcomed record-breaking visitor numbers in 2020 with more than 280,000 visitors across its six golf courses. This represented a 12 percent increase from 2019, despite being closed for a large part of the year. As a result, the business has been able to invest in a series of projects across the estate to improve its facilities and experience for its visitors.

Initial work is already underway at Duxbury Park Golf Course and Tilgate Forest Golf Centre. The upgrades include major drainage works and reconstruction of greens. Work will also be carried out at both Portsmouth Golf Course and Richmond Park golf courses over the next 12 months.

Tilgate Forest

In addition, there are further projects planned to improve club facilities. Both Castle Point and Richmond Park will begin redeveloping their driving ranges and practice facilities in the coming months, with Richmond Park also set to renovate its clubhouse’s external seating prior to the summer.

As part of Glendale Golf’s drive to improve sustainability across its network, the business has also started replacing all petrol buggies with new, environmentally friendly, electric fleets. Charge points have been installed by contractors local to the various courses.

“Whilst forced periods of closure and capacity restrictions provided their challenges, the nature of the sport meant we were less affected than most of the leisure industry, and we were fortunate to welcome a record number of visitors to our courses last year,” said Jon Dummett, head of golf at Glendale.

“The outcome of this is the opportunity for us to reinvest in our facilities and continue to improve the experience for our members and visitors, and we are incredibly excited to welcome everyone back for what we anticipate being another busy year for our courses.”