The article below was written by Steve Carroll of National Club Golfer.

Is the worst of the weather now behind us? While we may have seen some sun over the past couple of weeks, the impact of months of rain may continue to affect our golf courses long into 2024.

Jim Croxton, chief executive of the British and International Golf Greenkeepers’ Association (BIGGA), told The NCG Golf Podcast saturated conditions and the postponing of important winter projects could bring a hangover later in the year for some inland and parkland courses.

While we’ve fixated on the downpours when it’s been coldest, Croxton revealed we’ve experienced around 10 successive months of above average rainfall.

New Met Office figures reveal the UK recorded 445.8mm (17.5 inches) over the winter – 129 per cent the 1991 to 2020 average and the eighth wettest on record.

Croxton said while that rain brought obvious problems, it also had other effects which impacted the golf course. 

“When it’s too wet, particularly on inland courses, you can’t really get machinery onto those golf courses because you’re just going to do damage,” he said.

“All the winter project work is behind at many clubs. A lot of them have just aborted their winter work and I did hear of clubs not doing their spring renovations because when the weather finally turned around, the last thing you want to do is go out there and punch holes in greens and make them unplayable for another week.

“It does huge things to the golf course itself. It is sat with the soil saturated for months. It means the roots can almost be drowning. It’s not great nutrition wise.

“It’s been very difficult to do all the agronomic processes you would normally do through that winter period.

“So while courses look great now, inland and parkland courses are probably going to have struggles as the year goes on – as a hangover because they haven’t been able to do the work they really wanted to over the winter.”

‘We always say, greenkeepers don’t close golf courses. The weather does’

Croxton added on the podcast that his members shared the frustration of golfers who had endured long spells without golf over the last few months.

“It’s not just golfers that are annoyed,” he said. “Our members have been really struggling that they just relentlessly go into work – ‘fingers crossed, can I get something done today? No. There is another 25mm on the rain gauge. Golf course closed’.

“We always say, greenkeepers don’t close golf courses. The weather does. But, essentially, it’s still the greenkeeper that delivers the message. They’re still the harbinger of bad news.”

Asked how much pressure greenkeepers came under to get the course open, he continued: “When I first came into at BIGGA, I remember asking, if I went to an event with golf club managers and greenkeepers, ‘how many clubs had a course policy document?’

“At that time, very few clubs had a written document, which I describe as their business plan for the golf course. Nowadays, when I ask the same question, the vast majority have got that written down.

“Within that, there should be guidelines as to what your policies are around whether you close for frost, when you close for fog, danger, health and safety, and what you do around your procedures for the golf course closing.

“This winter has been extreme. It’s been beyond that. You’ve been making a business decision on a daily basis whether opening the golf course brings any benefit or is outweighed by the damage.

“I know some clubs have just opened it when they can, because they know their members are getting really antsy and they want to give them the opportunity.

“Very often, golfers come back in and say, ‘it should be closed out there’. But at least you’ve given them a chance to go and play.

“I think the decision to close almost feels like failure. These guys come into work at five or 6am and, if their first decision is ‘no play today’, that’s a pretty poor way to start your day.

“You can’t deliver the thing you’re employed to deliver, even though it’s not your fault. That’s a pretty hard thing to take.

“I don’t think it’s taken lightly, or as lightly as it ever used to be. But I do think this winter has been so extreme. Driving around, I’ve seen flooded areas on roads near me that I’ve never seen flooded before. We know it’s extreme.

“I think golfers have been largely understanding. It’s just pretty difficult when it comes to Saturday, isn’t it? You’ve been waiting all week, you want to go and play in the winter medal, or whatever else it is, and ‘I’m sorry, course closed’.

“Or you’re playing eight holes, or whatever. For a lot of people, it’s their one chance to go out and get fresh air, competition, and community. It’s disappointing for people.”

The article below was written by Steve Carroll of National Club Golfer.

How does your club generate money? If you’re about to embark on a long list of items you should probably stop right there.

While they might get their cash from a variety of different places, nearly all a club’s gross profit comes from two places – members’ and visitors’ wallets.

Renowned golf industry consultant Kevin Fish can reveal that between 95 and 98 per cent is derived from member subscriptions and visitor green fees.

“Membership subscriptions and visitor green fees account for that high proportion of gross profit, and the only thing that changes is the balance between the two,” he said.

“Some clubs have become a little dependent on the drug that is visitor revenue, while others choose to stand on their own two feet to cover their costs.”

And he added while food and beverage brings in cash, it rarely generates any profit – his findings coming from having studied the accounts of more than 250 UK golf clubs.

Fish, who has trained over 3,000 club managers through his consultancy firm Contemporary Club Leadership (https://ccl.services), revealed the data on golf club finance expenditure was also remarkably uniform.

When it comes to spending money, it doesn’t matter how big the club are, where they might be situated, or how high up the rankings they may be, their costs are also all remarkably similar. 

Almost 50 pence in every pound is spent on the golf course, and the vast majority of that is on course salaries. “It’s pretty labour intensive out there!” he said.

Other departments like admin and house are fairly evenly matched, and a slightly lower proportion is spent on fixed costs like insurance, legal costs and affiliation fees.

Golf club finance: Where do the costs come from?

Then there is golf ops payroll – which is generally, but not always, the pro – and a very small sliver is allocated to membership costs.

Fish said: “That’s things like, ‘what do we spend on the juniors? Team matches?’ It’s generally about one per cent of the total. “You might look at those costs and say, ‘I’ll bet it’s not the same at every golf club’. That’s what everybody says when they first come to me for assurance.

“But it doesn’t matter which club it is, it doesn’t matter what county it is in. Size doesn’t matter. Quality doesn’t matter. Geography doesn’t matter.

“Clubs like to be compared to others of equivalent size, so I have three tiers, low, middle, and high, broken down by what a club thinks their course is worth to a visitor midweek.  

“The low tier charges less than £2 a hole, so up to £36 per round, the middle tier is up to £72 and high tier is above that. The figures and proportions (of expenditure) are almost identical.”

He added: “Of course there are always going to be outliers. But a club then needs to ask itself why they perform differently. If that was a conscious decision to perform differently to the other clubs, well done.

“But I sometimes find that a club didn’t realise it was an outlier, and that can put an end to years of mismanagement, years of people pulling the wool over your eyes, and the club can set itself meaningful objective measurements to work towards.

“The governance structure in golf clubs can make decision-making vulnerable to the loudest voice, so I now only ever go into a boardroom as the most informed person, and I strongly advise club managers and club chairpersons to do the same. Isn’t that what any other business would do?”

Golf has been played for generations. What started as a rudimentary stick and ball game played on the wild links land of Scotland’s east coast is now an international sport enjoyed by millions across the globe.

During that long evolution, many practices and golf traditions have become so engrained within the game as to become custom.

With fortune often playing a significant part in a successful round of golf, it’s understandable that golfers have become a superstitious bunch. Players abide by golf traditions, sometimes centuries-old, pretty much every time they step out on the course.

In this blog, we delve into some of these great golf traditions and superstitions and take a closer look at how and why they first started.

Golf traditions and superstitions

18 holes

When golf began in the 1700s, Leith and Bruntsfield Links were five-hole courses, and the Old Course at St Andrews had 11, often played twice to make a round of 22 holes.

However, in 1764, the Old Course was altered to compress the first four holes into two (plus reversing the nines) to become an 18-hole course. The Old Course was so influential that 18 holes became the norm from that point on.

The universal call of ‘Fore’

No matter where a golfer comes from and what language they speak, when they hit a bad shot that could fly close to other golfers, they will shout ‘fore’.

It originates from the days when a ‘forecaddie’ was used by most ‘gentleman golfers’ to walk forward from the tee down the fairway in order to spot where their player’s ball landed. If the ball were heading in their direction, the player would shout ‘Forecaddie’ as a warning, which was later shortened to ‘Fore!’.

Related: Why do golfers shout fore?

Hole-in-one drinks round

Golf tradition dictates that those who beat the 12,500-1 odds to have an ace buy everyone a drink in the clubhouse afterwards.

Thankfully, golf insurance exists to help cover some of the cost of hefty bar bills these days, but nowhere in the world is this tradition more expensive than in Japan.

Here, the lucky (or unlucky, depending on which way you look at it) golfer can end up shelling out thousands on drinks and gifts. 

Related: The cost of hitting a hole-in-one

Hat etiquette

Golfers take their hats off when they shake hands with their playing partner or opponent. This is considered essential manners and has become golfing etiquette the world over.

However, the practice of removing headgear when greeting goes far beyond golf. In fact, it emanates from medieval nobility as a sign of trust that you weren’t expecting an imminent crack on the head from the person you were meeting.

Gimmes

Only seen in match play golf, gimmes are when a golfer can concede a putt to their opponent.

This used to refer to a putt from a shorter distance away than the top of the putter to the end of the grip, or ‘inside the leather’, as it was known. But this has since developed, as we saw at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome, where it was instead from the putter head to the start of the grip.

Gimmes can only be offered, not requested. They are a kind gesture when offered but can also play into the psychology of a match. A golfer may give generous gimmes throughout a round but then say nothing at a crucial point and ask their opponent to hole a short putt under pressure.

Related: What is a gimme in golf?

Dormie

In match play, when a golfer is the same number of holes ahead in a match than there are holes left to play, it is known as ‘dormie’.

This is derived from the French word ‘dormir’, meaning ‘to sleep’, and has been credited to the first known woman golfer, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was fluent in French, having spent much of her childhood in France.

Foursomes

Foursomes, or ‘alternate shot’ as it’s called in the US, is the most traditional format of the game. Played properly, two players should tee off while their partners wait down the fairway. This means foursomes should be a considerably quicker game than fourballs, and not just because of an obviously fewer number of shots.

It’s also the preferred format of the esteemed Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, who play at Muirfield. That may well be because of the legendary lunch that awaits in the clubhouse!

‘The Scottish play’ of golf

When the club’s hosel (where the head is joined to the shaft) meets the ball and causes it to fly violently off to the right, there is a five-letter word for it that starts with ‘sh’ and ends with ‘nk’. However, golfers usually, hilariously, eschew using the word, preferring to describe the affliction as ‘the unmentionables’.

Breakfast ball

This is one of many Stateside golf traditions, but we’re starting to hear it said and done increasingly in Europe, too. As the name suggests, breakfast ball is an early-morning scenario that permits a golfer—perhaps having had no chance to warm up—who has duffed their opening tee shot to have another shot without counting the first.

Slang

Golf is full of slang and jargon, from ‘the yips’—when a golfer has an involuntary flinch while putting, to ‘sandbagger’—the name given to a player that keeps their handicap higher to help them win tournaments, and to ‘Texas Wedge’—when a putter is used from off the green rather than a wedge.

The Champions Dinner at the Masters

This was the brainchild of the legendary Ben Hogan, who in 1952 decided that all past winners should gather for dinner before the upcoming tournament. The defending champion chooses the menu and foots the bill. The only non-champion who can attend is the Chairman of Augusta National. 

The hickory game

Hickory wood was the distinctive material of choice for golf clubs from the late 1800s all the way up to the 1970s and ‘80s.

Bernhard Langer was the last golfer to win the Masters with a wooden-headed driver when he did so in 1993.

The hickory tradition is enjoying somewhat of a resurgence today. Six-time Open Championship venue Musselburgh (Old) Links offers hickory rentals, and growing numbers of dedicated aficionados around the globe continue to play with their beloved hickories and dress eye-catchingly like the golfers of yesteryear.

The 19th hole

As golf traditions go, the ‘19^th hole’—referring to the bar or clubhouse area for that post-round drink—is arguably one of the best.

The Company of Gentlemen Golfers—now The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers—was first formed over drinks at Luckie Clephan’s tavern following their games on Leith Links. It’s said that the idea of the ‘19th hole’ was born here.