Fed up with my club so I'm moving on!

[ademac]

After a few months being unhappy at my club I have decided to cancel my membership/payments and move on.
There has been a few things that have really been peeing me off lately, the worst being,

not getting hcp adjustments/comp results for over 2 wks after the comp,

A group of "founder" members block booking all the best wkend tee times and not even using them, which is against the clubs policy according to the handbook but hasnt seemed to stop them.

No sign of a good atmosphere in the clubhouse unless I was involved with the founder members "swizz", which would cost around a tenner a week.

Not getting any reply from the secretary after leaving 3 messages with my name and number in a week.

The same faces winning the "pro shop challenges" and subsequent cash prizes but no hcp cuts!

There are a few other little niggling issues and its just made me feel like a second class citizen and makes me feel like I'm not getting what I pay for!

So I have decided to join a new club and am very excited about it!
The course has great pedigree, james braid originally designed it and harry colt made all of the adjustments some years later. I played it on sunday and compared to my old course its in a different league!

So golfing pastures new for me and cant wait to get involved!
Oxford golf club, formerly southfield is my new club if anyone is interested, come for a game, its great!

 

[Imurg]

Good!

Fed up of hearing you moan about Drayton - Glad you've done something about it.
They do seem to be a bit of a shower.....

 

[ademac]

haha! yeh it has gone downhill big time!

 

[BubbaP]

Thanks for info, Drayton is not too far form me and was planning on playing it to see how it was, with a possible view to joining in future. Had only been to their range to date, maybe now I won't bother.

Is Oxford GC the one that has a couple of holes near the Churchill hospital, if so I've walked around there and from what I saw it looked v nice.

Good luck!

 

[HomerJSimpson]

So I have decided to join a new club and am very excited about it!
The course has great pedigree, james braid originally designed it and harry colt made all of the adjustments some years later. I played it on sunday and compared to my old course its in a different league!

So golfing pastures new for me and cant wait to get involved!
Oxford golf club, formerly southfield is my new club if anyone is interested, come for a game, its great!

We play Oxford City (which I think is the same place) in a club match every year so hopefully I'll get to play at your place and maybe you'll get picked to come down to mine. It's a decent course by all accounts and I know the guys I played from there at my course (wasn't available for the return leg at Oxford) were raving about the condition of it in the summer and in particular the greens

I hope you like your new home and I'll definitely be up for a game next season

 

[Golfmmad]

Sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do!

I don't blame you for walking, sounds like they don't deserve any of your hard earned - load 'a knobs!!

Maybe you should print out a copy of your post to this forum and pin it up on their notice board.

 

[ademac]

Sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do!

I don't blame you for walking, sounds like they don't deserve any of your hard earned - load 'a knobs!!

Maybe you should print out a copy of your post to this forum and pin it up on their notice board.

Thats not a bad idea, I have spoken to them and told them how I feel. A couple of guys I know have also decided to jack it in.
It is a shame really because the course is a good challenge and kept pretty well and the pro is a decent bloke. Unfortunately all the other problems were just too much for me.
Also joining my new club until end of march will only cost me around £80 extra and next year it will work out to be almost the same price.

 

[Tommo21]

How many golf clubs are stuck in a rut. I think a lot of it is to appease the ones they think they need to appease rather than having any foresight for the clubs future and grasp the nettle.

All to often the first thing people think about is the reasons for not doing something rather than the right reasons for doing right.

 

[Golfmmad]

Thats not a bad idea, I have spoken to them and told them how I feel. A couple of guys I know have also decided to jack it in.
It is a shame really because the course is a good challenge and kept pretty well and the pro is a decent bloke. Unfortunately all the other problems were just too much for me.
Also joining my new club until end of march will only cost me around £80 extra and next year it will work out to be almost the same price.

Glad you voiced your feelings to them. It might, make them sit up and take notice!

Similarly, at my course, for reasons of staff shortages and machinery so they say, the rough was left to grow just off the fairways. Resulting in plenty of lost balls and not to mention, "Slow play"!

Word has it that the ladies threatened to leave en bloc if they didn't cut it back to normal.

They're still there and the rough is back to normal....................

Good luck at the new course - will expect a review very soon!

 

[PNWokingham]

I can't blame you at all - no excuses for any of those things. It is hard to make a golf club pay at the moment and one managed like that is only going in one direction.

 

[thecraw]

How many golf clubs are stuck in a rut. I think a lot of it is to appease the ones they think they need to appease rather than having any foresight for the clubs future and grasp the nettle.

All to often the first thing people think about is the reasons for not doing something rather than the right reasons for doing right.

Never a truer word has been typed Tommo. I had issues with my old club, four of the greens were a soggy mess every bloody year. I wrote to the club twice expressing my concerns and got a letter back from the captain saying "I'm not prepared to listen to the ill informed". The place was, still is run by the old guard and its really struggling. Funnily enough a new greenkeeper was brought in last year and the first thing he did was lift the four greens I complained about.

Also another forumer was a member, he wrote a letter about some issues and he got a letter back saying he was wrong.

Cant wait till they go tits up!!!!!!

 

[Tommo21]

Yeh Craw......I fear for Royal Musselburgh now. There is internal conflict going on and the greens are no where near as good as they have been. They got a coring machine a while back and it looks as if they’re trying to justify it by taking material out of the greens twice a year…big cores. The only problem is no material is going back into these cores and the greens end up like sponges with footprints easily visible and cores that take months to heal. In mid September I was still demonstrating to some of my mates, showing them I could put a tee down the core and waggle it about. Theses cores were done before the start of the season.

I’m all for aeration and all that goes with it but to get one reasonable length putt not to bounce was a miracle. I can go to Dunbar and I can putt all day and hardly notice a jump on the ball.

Golf clubs need members, long gone are the days of like it or lump it.

 

[Imurg]

We're on the countdown now to the HS2 decision sometime in December.
Nothing's really being done until that's been made. If it goes ahead it'll plough straight through the course. No investment will be made if it gets the nod and I suspect quality will plunge and members will walk.

 

[HickoryShaft]

We're on the countdown now to the HS2 decision sometime in December.
Nothing's really being done until that's been made. If it goes ahead it'll plough straight through the course. No investment will be made if it gets the nod and I suspect quality will plunge and members will walk.

Its a shame for the members but off all the reasons to hold off on course improvements I think this is a fair one. No point in putting in piles of cash if HS2 is on its way.

However for the OP the reasons are fairly clear cut - if nobody listens to valid concerns and the rest of the set up is problematic walking away is the right thing to do. Golf is there to be enjoyed so finding a new home in those circumstances is the best course of action.

 

[GB72]

I sometimes wonder how clubs ever get out of their rut due to the systems under which they are run. The established members elect a few of their own to be captain and run the committee. The officers then run the club in a way that suits the established members. It must be very hard for a newer member with new ideas to make any changes.

 

[Monty_Brown]

I sometimes wonder how clubs ever get out of their rut due to the systems under which they are run. The established members elect a few of their own to be captain and run the committee. The officers then run the club in a way that suits the established members. It must be very hard for a newer member with new ideas to make any changes.

Nail...on...head.

The idea that golf clubs can be run as personal fiefdoms is just bonkers, but there is a generation that thinks this is still the way things should work. I hope that it's on the way out as these old codgers retire or peg it up at the great course in the sky.

To be honest, running anything by committee tends to end in tears in my experience! Ideal scenario is a director of golf, who knows and loves the game, with a proper mandate to make decisions, without having to run every last point past the gin & tonic brigade who think they know better.

 

[thecraw]

What is HS2?

 

[Monty_Brown]

High Speed Rail 2 link, from London to Brum. This year's white elephant or saviour of modern civilisation, depending who you believe.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Wasn't there a feature in a recent GM about another club in a similar position and about to lose a lot of its holes? I have to say I do find some of our committee's (greens committee anyway) hard to understand about how they come to some decisions and how they fail to make choices at all on some subjects that to many are crystal clear and obvious. However for the most part they do ok and so I think I'd rather have people who are members like me making the choices rather than one head honcho calling all the shots

 

[sweatysock41]

There are a couple of clubs up here that may be affected, the GM spread was about Whittington Heath - a cracking course near Lichfield, I believe that Kenilworth may lose some of their course as well another good track that may have to be changed. I think Wrighty 1874 could confirm if that's true as he said in another post that he is a member at Kenilworth.