by Céline | Apr 16, 2017 | Captaincy, Competitions
An eclectic competition to encourage people to play over the winter
Spot the ball
One of my goals as Captain is to encourage our members to play more. Of course, for most people, winter is a time when a round of golf slips down the list of priorities at the weekend. Who would want to go out on a windy, freezing hill wearing so many layers to avoid hypothermia that they can barely move their arms? A pub lunch and a snooze are so much more appealing. That’s why I had the idea of organising a 9 hole winter eclectic competition.
What is an eclectic competition?
The principle of an eclectic competition is brilliant: for every round you play, only the best score on each and every hole is kept. You end up with one eclectic card showing all your best scores for the rounds you played within the specified period. I made it so people could hand in 9 holes at a time to try and make it even more accessible. That way, Thundersnow-shy golfers as well as our older members who rarely play 18 holes could participate. I mentioned it to a few people at the club and they told me they used to have one. They had a whiteboard where they would keep their scores, which they would wipe off and change when they improved. I wasn’t surprised to hear that it got quite messy. Surely, there had to be a better way.
Stats and a new competition: it’s almost too much fun
Enter Excel, the program I love to hate, because as a translator, it’s the worst possible format to work in. However, a workbook seemed to me to be the high-tech version of the whiteboard. Plus, golf geeks like me would have the untold pleasure of finishing with a clear idea of where their strength and weaknesses lie in terms of the various holes on the course. I used to think the 11th was one of the easiest holes for me, but records reveal that I make par far less often than I thought. Never, in fact. I thought I was useless at par 3s (3rd, 6th and 8th); in fact, I’m not that bad. Anyway, enough about me. The benefits were many: giving members, old and young, a reason to go out and play golf, stats for the geeks and an extra competition that was longer and very different from the rest.
A user-friendly Excel workbook
All I needed for a ready-made eclectic workbook, because I don’t have the skills to build one myself. It was surprisingly hard to find one that suited my needs, but the Internet provided. It is called Excel Golf Scores Workbook and is provided by Contextures. It was an excellent starting point, but not exactly what I wanted, as it’s for a single user. I needed one worksheet per player feeding into a general results’ table for the competition. Thankfully we have many talented people in our section, so I asked one clever member to help me out (thank you Susannah). She built the bones of the file I needed, and I fleshed it out.
The result is a thing of beauty. Every player has a results’ worksheet. This is mine:
Each player’s result worksheet feeds into a table that gives the nett and gross scores as well as the number of 9 hole cards put in.
Et voilà! All you need to do is click the little arrow in the Nett column to end with a table for your competition.
The result? I’m not certain it did encourage people to go out in the awful weather we had this winter. However, people must have enjoyed it, as they were keen to have a Summer eclectic competition and many more have signed up for it. So I guess the eclectic competition is here to stay at Brighton and Hove!
How to use the Amazing eclectic competition workbook
Download my Amazing eclectic competition workbook.
Enter the course information
Start by entering the par for each hole in your golf course on the player’s sheet.
Create a worksheet per player
The method will vary according to your version of Excel, so there’s no point in me explaining how. I can help with Excel for Mac, but that’s about it!
Enter your scores
After each round, enter the date and your score for each hole. The pars will be coloured orange, and scores below par are bright green (see example above).
Player’s summary
The player’s summary at the top gives the best and average scores and the number of rounds played. There’s also a tally of your pars, bogeys, birdies, etc., for each hole. The most frequent type of score is highlighted for each hole.
Table
Enter the names of the players In the A column.
The B column needs to be populated with their gross score, so enter =REF!V10 in the formula bar, replacing “REF” with the name of the player’s worksheet (in this example, “LauraD“).
Enter the player’s handicap in the C column manually (I couldn’t work out how to make it automatic, as handicaps change).
Column D is populated automatically.
Column E is for a competition where players are allowed to enter 9 hole cards. If you want to base your competition on 18 hole rounds, in every player’s sheet, click on cell C4 and delete “+L49” in the formula bar.
I’m very happy to help if any of this is unclear. Just fire me an email.
by Céline | Apr 6, 2017 | Captaincy
Newsletter and improved website for better communication
Screenshot of useful info on our new website
I’ve already touched on the subject of improving communication within the ladies’ section at Brighton & Hove Golf Club, particularly through my email newsletter. It’s proved very efficient to disseminate information. Members who spend weeks away from the club have also told me that they appreciate being able to keep in touch with what’s going on. I’ve also been involved in the development of our new website, so I added communication tools like a diary and links to our newsletter. Feedback has been good so far. Because we used WordPress, a very simple and highly customisable platform, I can easily change it to suit our section’s needs.
WhatsApp group to organise rounds
The other very useful tool I used is a WhatsApp group to organise rounds outside our regular Wednesday competitions. We have tee times booked on Saturdays for members who can’t do Wednesdays, but the arrangement is looser and numbers vary. Established members normally have their habits when it comes to playing golf, but it’s more complicated for new members. Within a club, relationships take a while to form, so I wanted to help them find playing partners. My other goal, after all, is to encourage people to play more golf! I chose WhatsApp because it’s widely used and efficient. You simply create a group (see link above), et voilà! People can have a group conversation to find out who’s available to play. It’s also very easy to mute a group if it’s too “noisy”, so nobody needs to be inconvenienced.
Other tool to manage bigger groups
Screenshot of the “I’m in” interface
I’m looking into an app called I’m in for my football team at the moment. I wondered whether it could be useful for my Saturday golf crowd. My football friends and I have been getting together to play every Wednesday for the last 20 years or so, and during the winter, attendance can be variable. Every Wednesday, there’s a flurry of communication to work out whether we have enough for a game. We do have a WhatsApp group, but it’s not always easy to scroll through the messages and work out how many are going. I’m in allows you to create a recurrent event, then it sends an email to everyone in a group. All they have to do is press a Yes or a No, then a list of people gets built on your event page. This might be overkill for us, as our section is small and we have at most eight people playing on a Saturday. However, it could be useful for ladies’ sections needing to manage bigger numbers on an ad hoc basis.
Other ideas?
I’ve thought about setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts dedicated to the section, but I don’t think we need them. We are all overloaded with information as it is. Plus, so far, a combination of email newsletter, website news and text messaging via WhatsApp seems to work for us. I still remain on the lookout for other ways of sharing information, though! How do you manage communication within your section?
by Céline | Feb 22, 2017 | Captaincy
My goals as Captain
I gave myself three goals to achieve during my year as Captain:
- Improve communications within the section
- Encourage members to play more golf
- Grow the section
A newsletter to communicate more efficiently
I’ve made progress in all three, but the one I’ve enjoyed the most is the first: improve communications. The way we used to exchange information within the section was very simple. Direct verbal communication, notices on the board in the ladies’ room and email. These methods worked, but they also have some drawbacks: what if a member isn’t there when information is communicated verbally? What if a member doesn’t go up to the club for a while or simply doesn’t notice the important message on the board? What if a member doesn’t use email?
Besides, members who work full time and sometimes only play once a week or every couple of weeks can find it difficult to keep track of what’s happening. And when someone is ill or takes time off golf for whatever reason, they can quite easily become cut off from the section. That’s why I decided to start a monthly newsletter to complement the existing system. I send it by email and it gets printed out and pinned to the board in the ladies’ room. That way, members who don’t use email still have access to it.
Keeping the section’s identity
Mailchimp, an online tool to create email campaigns
I did a bit of research and picked Mailchimp, a very simple online tool to create email campaigns. Because I’m very impatient and I get excited about things, I didn’t take any time to learn how to use it and just started building my newsletter. I’m sure I wasted lots of time and I’m not making the most of all its features, so if you’re interested, I suggest you watch this beginners’ tutorial about Mailchimp.
As I said, I created my first newsletter in about ten minutes. It is that easy. I picked our section’s colours and started writing.
Competitions diary
Competitions and events update
This allows me to lay out what’s coming up the following month: club and external competitions, social events, clinics and any other news. This way, we all have in our inbox all the information about what’s happening in the next four weeks. I also add photos that I take whenever we get together. This makes the newsletter more lively and appealing and it’s nice to have visual memories of the life of the section.
Stories about the course
Stories about the club and golf
I also decided that I wanted to share interesting tidbits about the club and golf in general. I started relaying older members’ stories, which is a nice way of reinforcing the culture of the section and our awareness of our common heritage. Finally, I like to include a rule to improve everyone’s knowledge; in fact, the two rules I’ve shared on this blog have come from the newsletter.
A very useful tool
It’s been a great learning curve for me. It’s given me an excuse to be nosy and have lovely chats with our older members, who have taught me a lot about the club and the course. It’s also encouraged me to look up rules and regulations that I wanted to share. More crucially, as Captain, it means that I can communicate all the important info at the beginning of each month. This helps a lot with organising events and getting the support I need. It also clarifies in my own mind what I have to do for everything to happen smoothly. I thought I’d struggle to find things to write every month, but far from it, I’m having to delete items because it’s always too long. So much to tell!
by Céline | Feb 10, 2017 | Captaincy
In my quest to be a decent Lady Captain, I thought I’d seek the advice and experience of friends who have already taken the mantle. Heather was Lady Captain at Worthing Golf Club last year. Our two clubs couldn’t be more different: we have 9 holes and they have an outrageous 36 holes over two wonderful downland courses. The Ladies’ section, as well as the whole club, also boast a much bigger membership. I still was curious to hear more about her experience and to seek her precious advice on how to carry out my duties. Over to you, Heather, and thanks again for talking to me!
Tell me about the women’s section at Worthing GC.
It’s a large section, with about 130 playing members. Most of our ladies play on Tuesdays, while the ‘business’ ladies play their competitions at the weekend; there’s also a group that plays social golf on Thursdays, as well as at other times of the week with friends and social groups. These groups are quite separate, especially as some Tuesday ladies are 5 day members, so they rarely play at the weekend. However, nearly everyone comes together for certain ‘landmark’ events in the year, such as the Spring & Autumn meetings, Away Days, and Lady Captain’s Day.
We have teams in all three SCLGA (Sussex County Ladies Golf Association) divisions and a scratch team, of whom we’re enormously proud. And we have our juniors, about 80 in total, a mixture of boys and girls of different ages. We attracted new players as a couple of neighbouring courses closed recently, which meant we had quite an influx of players, both ladies and men. Our Ladies Captain and Committee is very welcoming and introduces new members to other players through our new members’ events.
What were your main duties as Lady Captain?
What weren’t they? I’ll send you a job description I drew up for myself to help future in-coming Captains as I was slightly in the dark as to what was involved [Later, Heather sent me the file and it has 45 bullet points! 45!]. Obviously looking after the Ladies’ section, and I instigated ‘Heather’s Golfing Round-Up’, an internal newsletter so our Ladies knew what was going on, and to encourage them to sign up for competitions. Then all the extra committees like House Committee (anything to do with the clubhouse, staffing, decoration, etc.). It was quite a wide brief, with Golf & Handicap Committee as well – anything to do with those areas, we’d have a representative from the Ladies’ section. I organised events, trying to keep them fresh, interesting and FUN. Also social events – I introduced a dinner and prize-giving following our Ladies’ Club Championship and people really loved it.
Then we had an exchange with Ham Manor GC in January: two Worthing and two Ham Manor members playing in a friendly match, light lunch and prize-giving afterwards. These events spread the word and help women meet players from other clubs; it opens things up. I also organised days out at Mid Sussex GC and Mannings Heath GC, with a round of golf, lunch and prize-giving, plus a Strawberry Cream Tea at The Dyke GC. For prizes, I had a lot of support from our Worthing Pro, Mike Henning, who provided prizes and vouchers and was very accommodating in getting winners the right size. Aside from golfy prizes, I ran a vintage theme throughout my year; I bought ‘vintage’ prizes for certain events, and one of my prizes for the ‘Teapot Trophy’ was afternoon tea at MetroDeco, a vintage tea room in Kemp Town, and I was chauffeur – that proved very popular!
Did you have any goals for your year as Captain? What were they? Did you achieve them?
YES. At the beginning of my year, I wrote myself a list called “What does success look like?”
1. More integration of weekend & Tuesday ladies/juniors
2. Wider cross section of golf linked activities
3. Increased participation in both qualifying and non qualifying comps
4. Charity collection = £3000
I believe I achieved over and above, according to feedback from the Pro and some Lady members. I’m a perfectionist, so whatever I do is never good enough.
What made you particularly proud?
I’m particularly proud of getting through the year because I was working full-time, looking after my grand-daughter once a week, so there was a lot of stress and pressure. I’m also really proud of getting my handicap down to 9, but that’s probably because I played over 130 rounds of golf during my year!
But most of all I wanted people to have fun, I wanted to have fun myself and hear a lot of laughter. I also wanted to introduce a few new competitions and events that were more up-to-date and raise the bar a little. Whether my changes will survive is a question mark, because each Lady Captain goes in with her own ideas, to put her own stamp on – what happens one year could be overthrown the following year.
What did you find most challenging?
I was keen to modernise the section and introduce new ideas. If we want to continue to recruit new members, we have to change and be more flexible and versatile in the things we offer, like 9 hole and early evening competitions to fit in with work and motherhood. Changing how things were done and new marketing ideas were the most difficult task for me, because like a lot of members’ golf clubs, tradition prevails. But I did get NOBO boards on the back of the cloakroom doors to promote events!
What did you enjoy the most?
The Championship Dinner, which was a first, and I’m glad that our Lady Captain organised it again this year. I can be a bit of an ‘actress’ sometimes, so I loved being organiser, speaker and acting ‘the part’. What gave me the greatest satisfaction was seeing people enjoying themselves. I also organised two speakers: Lucy McCrickard, of LGM Nutrition, from Brighton, who performed some interesting tests on members. I also had a guy from Owls About Town near Chichester because we have a competition called the Tawny Owl, so he brought Ginny, a tawny owl with him, and we had a chat about how owls compare to golfers – that was fascinating! Very early in my year, I organised County Match Week, and had a huge amount of support from our Ladies Committee and Members – the feedback from visiting clubs and SCLGA was outstanding, and of course, Sussex went on to become overall runners-up.
If you were to do it again, what would you do differently?
I’d have to think long and hard about doing it again! The sheer personal effort involved was enormous as I was working full-time. I believe that if you put a lot in, you get a lot out, but it took so much out of me personally. It can be difficult to deal with negative feedback and to get everyone to buy into your plans. If I were to do it again, I’d delegate more and get members of the committee to organise specific events. I found it emotionally draining because I didn’t realise the enormity of the role and I wish I had used my year as Vice-Captain to better prepare myself, but there are many ‘unknowns’ eg the weather! It was demoralising trying to make changes in a club big on tradition.
After 25 years in business, I tend to think I know what I’m doing and I’m used to being in charge, so it was difficult to encounter resistance to some of my ideas when I had such a short period of time.
It’s probably too soon to appreciate what I achieved and I’m finding it difficult to transition to being a regular member again. So what I would do differently is ask for more advice in my Vice-Captain’s year in order to be ready for the emotional roller-coaster that being a Captain can be.
Any tips?
Stay cool. Plan ahead. Get a good team around you. Recognise all the different needs within the Ladies’ section and look after all of them, but realise you can’t please everyone, all of the time. Leave lots of notes for the incoming Captain and enjoy yourself – because it goes so quickly!
