Now that most of the autumn renovation work is completed on the green and the winter green maintenance program is well underway I want to take a week away from agronomic issues and focus more clearly on how your club is doing. Of course if there are any pressing, green related issues, we can continue to discuss these through the usual channels.
So over the course of the next few days I will publish a series of articles on Bowling Club Membership Retention and Growth. These will look at the following subject areas:
The Importance of Member Loyalty (today)
Where are you with Member Loyalty?
Understanding your Target Audience and their needs.
Fulfilling audience expectations
Delivering exceptional service to your members.
Perpetuating your club’s vision through training.
These articles are extracts from my forthcoming eBook, titled as you might have guessed Bowling Club Membership Retention and Growth, which will be available here from 14th November 2011 onwards. This builds upon the concepts of the “customer” or club “user” as discussed in Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround.
So to start off the week I want to take a brief look at Member Loyalty. I hope you enjoy these articles and get some positive outcomes for your club from them.
Member Loyalty
Customer loyalty is the single most important element to retain within any business relationship and readers of Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround will know that the single most effective strategy for any bowling club that’s serious about survival is to start thinking and behaving a lot more like a business.
So, as in any other business your bowling club will derive a lot of positive benefit from a well established and loyal member base.
In business and increasingly in bowling clubs, large proportions of the available budget (or other resources) are allocated to Read more
The autumn is traditionally a busy time for bowling green contractors, greenkeepers and club officials as they decide, plan and carry out the autumn renovation works on the green before putting it to bed for the winter.
Now have a look back over that last paragraph; if you didn’t wince at least twice, then it’s possible that you are about to embark on a program of work that will actually harm your green.
It probably won’t be dramatic like the sudden death of your green for ever, but it will probably have a negative impact on the future of your green’s ability to be presented for play consistently well, and maybe even on your club’s chance of survival in these harsh economic conditions.
Having a clear picture of your club’s current standing is essential before you can even start to thnk about the future.
Without this picture of the situation as it is Now, you can’t possibly decide where you are going in the future.
The winter months are a good time to be gathering this information, deciding on a vision for the future and developing plans for getting there.
When writing this up, think in terms of of finance, popularity, future costs and income, offers in the pipeline, projects coming up, green condition and maintenance requirements, clubhouse fabric condition and maintenance and upgrading requirements, rentals, rates, subscriptions, insurances, advertising and marketing, event hosting and event planning and membership growth and retention.
Once you have this snapshot its easy to move on to planning the future. Tomorrow we will look at that more closely.
This morning I had to take my old jeep for its MOT.
We live in the countryside in upland Perthshire and it’s about a 10 mile drive to the garage in the nearest town, which in its heyday was a thriving market town and more recently a busy tourist destination.
Incidentally the town had two bowling clubs until recently, but sadly the public, council operated green has now closed.
This is in keeping with the town’s fortunes generally.
The arrangement was for my wife to pick me up from the garage, but somehow we got our wires crossed and I was left with enough time to have a coffee from the local shop and a leisurely walk through the town.
Its funny but when you’re driving you don’t see the finer details or get a feel for what’s really going on in a place.
The site I saw was quite a sorry one; I counted Read more
I often talk about close mowing here on bowls central and don’t usually recommend a cutting height of less than 4.5mm even in perfect growing conditions. Of course the mower blades will have been set higher during the recent very dry and very hot weather to allow the plants to retain more leaf area and therefore more moisture. An understanding of turf grass growth characteristics is important in helping you to make the correct maintenance decisions.
Crown
Another reason for avoiding excessively close mowing is the irreversible damage that can be done to the grass plant, especially if the crown is damaged. The plant can survive a lot of trauma as long as the crown remains intact, so great care should be taken to avoid scalping the green too close.
In my recent post about turf grass shoot structures I mentioned the plant stem as one particular shoot structure used by turf grass plants. You can think of the crown of the grass plant as a stem that has been squashed down, concertina style to the ground. All of the internodes where leaves arise are stacked alternately into a very compact stem that barely rises above the soil surface. This critical part of the grass plant includes the upper stem apex and the same bud meristems (where new shoots arise) as the longer stems we looked at before, only in this form the nodes are all tightly stacked with no elongation of the internodal area to speak of. Finally there are the lower meristematic nodes and it is here that the plant can initiate new roots and shoots.
Lateral Shoots
New lateral shoots can be initiated from vegetative meristems or buds in the base of leaves or from stem nodes, rhizomes or stolons. These lateral shoots can be tillers, stolons or rhizomes depending on species and conditions.
Intravaginal Growth
Young stems can grow out from the basal sheath of the the grass leaf and this is called intravaginal growth.
Tillers
The main turf grass plant characteristic that allows the formation of dense sports turf is that of tillering. Tillers originate intravaginally from the plant stem and can be encouraged by
mowing below 30mm
ready availability of Nitrogen
good sunlight levels and reduced shade
good carbohydrate reserves in the plant (strong photosynthesis activity)
Some grass species employ tillering exclusively and therfore form a bunch type growth habit. These include colonial bentgrass, hard fescue, sheep’s fescue, chewings fescue, annual ryegrass, perenneial ryegrass and annual meadowgrass.
Extravaginal Growth
Extravaginal growth is when young stems grow vegatatively by pushing through the lower part of the basal leaf sheath. This type of growth is split into two main groups:
Stolons
A stolon is a secondary shoot that grows extravaginally above ground with considerable elongation of the stem horizontally.
this allows the plant to initiate a spreading (sometimes called creeping) growth habit.
creates a secondary carbohydrate reserve for emergencies
creates opportuities for spreading vegatively as each node on the stem can produce new daughter plants by producing roots and shoots.
increases the knitting together and strength of the turf.
Common stoloniferous grasses include velvet bentgrass and creeping bentgrass
Rhizomes
Rhizomes are similar to stolons except that they break through the leaf basal sheaf below ground and spread by means of elongated underground lateral stems. This characteristic:
gives the plant a strong lateral, spreading growth habit.
adds to turf strength and integrity
provides a secondary carbohydrate store for emergency growth requirements
helps turf to have a strong recuperative potential from wear and injury
allows for improved dormancy survival after heat and drought
initiates new plants at stem nodules in the same way that stolons do except underground.
Rhizomatous grass plants grow strongly when conditions provide for their optimum temperature ranges (150-240C for cool season and 270-350C for warm season grasses). Long day length, high light intensity and lower nitrogen availability also favour their success.
To provide the thickening of turf density the rhizome must turn upwards towards the surface to allow for new shoots to be initiated and this is favoured by light exposure (e.g. by aeration, brushing etc), low CO2 levels in the soil (aeration), heat stress (not over watering), shorter photo period (day length) and good nitrogen availability.
The rhizomatous grasses include many of the red fescues and smooth stalked meadow grass.
Integrated Secondary Lateral Growth Habits
Many of the most commonly used warm season turf grasses employ stolons and rhizomes to create a very vigorous and tight knit turf that recuperates well from stress and provides high wear tolerance. These include many of the Bermuda, Zoysia and Seashore Paspallum grasses.
Inflorescence
Annual Meadowgrass inflorescence on bowling green (photo by S Kennerley)
This is the structure put up by the plant in order to create and spread its seed. It is an erect flowering structure and the seeds are formed on individual spikelets of it. Shortenting day length and cooling temperatures initiate this in cool season grasses. This isn’t usually a feature of quality turfgrass as it depends on grass being allowed to grow naturally to its full height, but it can be seen in turf on annual meadow grass in the spring and early summer.
If you have anything to add or any questions please leave a comment or drop me a line.
