By Adrian Logue
Winter in Australia is prime time for golfers to live out their dream UK trip and enjoy some great golf courses during the Northern summer. With the Open at St Andrew’s, many groups of Australian golfers planned their trips around attending, whilst also playing the great links in the region.
In a recent discussion with a General Manager, who returned from his own Scottish golf holiday, he related his amazement at the ‘Scot’s’ uncomplicated and simple approach to golf and by design, their operations.
He spoke to the Head Green Keeper at one high-profile links who mentioned that their green staff had “swelled” to four people to cope with the surge of post-COVID travellers. The staff maintain 27 world-class holes but “all we have to do is mow the whole thing two times a week!”, he complained, only half joking.
The course is beautifully presented in mottled browns and shades of green with hardpan fairways and dry, wispy fescue roughs that deliver a supreme test of strategic golf. A far cry from the hyper-green, water-hungry monoculture of manicured grasses, ornate gardens and decorative water features seen at many metropolitan Australian courses.
This is not a criticism of the incredible hard work and pride that Australian green keepers put into presenting an amazing golf experience, but more a comment on the tastes of the typical travelling golfer who sees how simple and unadorned a great golf course can be; but demands a more expensive (but not always better) form of golf upon returning home.
As you might have guessed, this story is not to start a debate about agronomy and maintenance practices, but to draw attention to a trend towards simplicity that we strive to apply to all aspects of club operations – including software.
With SimpleGolf, we understand the intricacies of managing timesheets, competitions and scoring systems but we also know that it’s possible to deliver a simple user experience that belies the complexity of the underlying rules and calculations that power a modern golf operation.
If we learn anything from the uncluttered straightforwardness of golf in Scotland, it’s that simple doesn’t mean “lesser”, in fact, it usually means “better”.
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