‘Make as much mess as you can’

Having a group of kids running through your bunkers is the stuff of nightmares for most greenkeepers, but Dudley Course Manager Stewart Marshall actively encouraged such behaviour during a recent First Green event.

The club joined forces with The Grace Mary to Lion Farm Big Local charity to host the event, which welcomed around 40 children and 35 parents to the Midlands venue. Stewart is on the committee of the charity, which delivers a wide range of social welfare activities aimed at improving facilities and service provision for people living, working and volunteering in the area.

Despite being in the middle of greens renovations, he was delighted to welcome people of all ages, many of whom had never set foot on a golf course before. “We amalgamated a charity day and the First Green event into one, and it was a great occasion,” said Stewart. “As well as catering for them all, we put on an online course for the parents, while the kids were out on the course, to educate them on safe internet use for their children at home.”

The youngsters were taken on an eco-walk of the course by a Wildlife Trust expert, who taught them about the flora and fauna. Along with taking a turn on each of the stations providing hands-on STEM-based learning, they were given an opportunity to rake bunkers, change holes, divot fairways and tees and even play a few shots in the nets and on the green.

Providing an example of the kind of fun the children enjoyed, Stewart said: “I split the kids into two groups and asked the first lot to run through a bunker and make as much mess as they could! The other group had to rake the bunker and then they swapped places. They loved it.”

Stewart’s biggest hope is that the experience has put greenkeeping on the radar as a career option for the children. “A lot of greenkeepers were golfers as kids, and when they left school or college they maybe started to help out as a summer job, found they enjoyed it and got into it from there,” he said.

“I hope some of those kids will have enjoyed it enough to think that greenkeeping might be something they’d like to do.” GI