Why it’s so important members understand sustainability

Owen James, England Golf’s Sustainability Manager, explains how you can get members on side when making your golf course more environmentally friendly

Droughts, floods, lack of water, bio-diversity, irrigation, drainage, rain-harvesting, solar panels, resources, chemical inputs, pollinators and bird-boxes.

Twelve subjects, twelve different levels of expertise required, and only just the start. And none of these adequately explain, or tackle, all the issues of sustainability on a golf course.

Most of us know sustainability matters. We know climate change is having an impact on our golf courses. We know fears over the availability of water, what we use to tackle disease, and the need to reduce our energy consumption – not least in the wake of soaring prices.

From re-wilding areas of the course, to taking away fungicides and pesticides from the course arsenal, many clubs are understanding things need to change and are putting new policies into effect.

But how much has that resonated with the average golfer? Getting their buy-in, particularly when they’re faced with costly bills for new irrigation systems, for example, is vital.

“Particularly for those committee-led clubs, it can be very challenging and it’s very easy in sustainability to bounce from one issue to the next. That embedding of sustainable thinking into every day play hasn’t yet happened,” says Owen James, England Golf’s sustainability manager.

“There are various reasons for that. A lot of it is unseen by members, particularly when we’re talking about irrigation and drainage. Until there is a problem, members don’t really see that kind of stuff.

“An irrigation system to members is essentially some hosepipes. But if you look at the complexities of an irrigation system then it’s multi-hundreds of thousand of pounds worth of asset.

“It’s so important members understand them, but I think there can be a disconnect between what happens at board or committee level and what the average member is told or absorbs.

“There are so many different elements of sustainability to focus on that a lot of clubs go, ‘we don’t really know where to start, so we just won’t’.

“Until there is a problem, it’s very difficult to have the conversation from a pro-active standpoint.”

So what’s the best way to get members engaged in the sustainability debate? How can clubs put their best environmental feet forward and keep everyone happy in the clubhouse? James has some pearls of wisdom to help the process along…

Communication is key: Send more than just one message

It’s not just the myriad issues of sustainability. It’s the myriad ways golfers absorb information. We’ve got club notice boards, newsletters, social media, word of mouth, workshops and webinars. There are so many different ways of communicating with members these days and you can’t really prioritise one over the other – particularly when we look at demographics.

If you’ve got a story, put it across all your channels rather than just focusing on one and saying, ‘if you’ve missed the newsletter, you’ve missed it. That’s your fault.

There are different ways of communicating.

Be transparent with those messages

How will this impact your golf – whether that might be through the playability of the golf course, or through your membership fees?

It’s not even about saying, ‘we’re doing this to save money’. We’re getting to the point where it’s: ‘if we don’t do this, this is where the golf club is going to go’.

Lay it out transparently. A lot of the issues with sustainability come not just from lack of understanding but lack of transparency. People think there is always a hidden agenda or there is something else happening.

An example is tree removal – a big topic that is always controversial. ‘If we don’t thin out that copse between the 6th and 7th, we’re going to spend double the amount on grass seed next year – because we have to keep regenerating the fairway. We have to spend more on water to help that grass seed, more on fertiliser, use more greenkeeper hours just to keep that grass alive’.

If you list all those things, the arguments are minimised.

It’s not about just throwing an academic report at [members]. Apply the knowledge to that specific case. Take it and apply it to your individual circumstances.

Actions speak larger than words: Start small and show those successes

Showcase the positive impacts (of sustainability projects) but also showcase that there hasn’t been any negative impacts. That’s so important.

Going back to tree removal, if you know your whole golf course has too many trees, focus on one area first. We’re going to show what the process is, how we do it, what it costs, how much it saves, and then you can say, ‘we’ve done it, we ‘ve shown it works. 18 months later we’re going to do that area as well. Are there any problems?’

Nine times out of then there won’t be. It’s about building that trust and building that buy-in. You can do that through smaller actions that don’t have that impact and then going bigger.

People will always catastrophise and see the worst situation rather than see the best. There was a golf club that were going to carry out a tree removal project and they went in and spray painted all of the trees that were staying.

I thought this was really interesting because, normally, if you see spray paint on a tree you think it is being removed. The members were up in arms, ‘you can’t take that many trees out’.

It was, ‘no, these are the ones that are staying’. All of a sudden, the members could see it in a different way. ‘We won’t really notice the removal, so let’s crack on with it and let’s do it’.

So show that success, start small, do it once and then have it elsewhere. That’s for everything. If you’re looking at removal of fungicides from a golf course, for example, don’t do it on all 18 greens at once. Try it, maybe, on half of the putting green so the members can see the comparison between an area that hasn’t had fungicides and an area that has and ‘this is what we’re going to have to put up with’.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

When a golf club comes to us we always try to work in a bespoke manner and on something that will work for them and their members. We’re not trying to fit square pegs in round holes. We want to make sure that people are aware of their challenges at club level and we can certainly offer that level of support.

By GCMA Content Team