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Author: John

Master Greenkeeper John Quinn is the author of Performance Bowling Greens, and several other titles on Greenkeeping, Club and Business Management.

Take a Business View for Club Success

image021Committees are difficult structures with which to run a business, but there can be no doubt in any bowling club official’s mind that the only way for clubs to survive and prosper in the future will be for them to be managed as proper businesses.

In the trying times we find ourselves in, both in relation to the falling uptake of the sport and the general financial climate in the country, the commitment to this approach could quite possibly be the only deciding factor between success and failure for many clubs.

Although the traditional committee structure employed by most clubs can make it difficult to consistently apply the strategic approach needed for long term business growth and improvement, this can be eased by the introduction of Read more

Understanding your target audience

Today I would like to introduce the concept of “a target audience”

I deal with this comprehensively in Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround and it takes a view that the successful bowling clubs of the future will look quite a bit different to the ones we are familiar with today.

The essence of this is that not all of your club’s revenue will come from bowlers and that you will need to set your sights on a much wider range of “customers” within your local community if your club is to thrive.

This is why I have repeatedly used the terms Member, Customer and User; to try to differentiate between the traditional bowling club member and the future mix of customers a club (the word “customer” of course emphasising the need for clubs to think like businesses) will require to focus on if it is to attract and sustain sufficient foot-fall to thrive in the future.

Of course, people won’t be conveniently Read more

Smooth and fast greens!

As always this season has started off with many greens playing “slow”. The usual reasons apply of course; mowing heights are still above summer level, the frequency of cutting is still low in many cases due to a really slow start to growth in many areas. Many greens are also thatchy and there has been a lot of moss about as we come out of winter, due partly to the excessively wet end to last summer and more significantly to long term Localised Dry Patch problems which are inherently linked to persistent moss problems. Oh yes and of course we are all still Read more

Irrigation Systems

Bowling green irrigation is one of the areas of bowling green maintenance that raises the most questions.

On the face of it, this appears to be a simple subject; install sprinklers (watering systems), switch them on when it’s dry and the green gets evenly watered and everybody’s happy!

In reality it is a minefield of decisions including; best system design for your green, water storage, watering schedules, when, how and how much to water, green speed, disease, dry patch, thatch etc.

I have assembled some more in-depth information regarding the watering of bowling greens here.

If you need any help with this subject please feel free to drop me a line directly.

Bowls Green Levels; what can be done?

 

Survey?

Laser surveying will tell you exactly where discrepancies occur down to about 1cm of change. This can be done on a 1 metre grid so that you end up with a very clear colour coded picture of the green surface.

However, once you have a survey result in front of you, what do you do with it?

Top Dressing?

Well you could embark on a program of localised top-dressing as I have seen some clubs do, but this is a largely futile process, as you simply can’t make a big enough impact in a reasonable timeframe for it to be truly noticeable or beneficial or worth the investment. In to the bargain, as you are doing this the green is changing all of the time.

Rolling?

Heavy rolling should be avoided, but regular light to medium weight rolling with a tru-level type roller is very beneficial.

Decisions

In the end you must Read more