The Clubroom in the North Berwick Golf Club Clubhouse played host to a fun evening for members of all clubs to come together and enjoy a discussion evening hosted by new General Manager, Stuart Bayne with myself (Kyle) and Chris Haspell presenting. This night was used to give the members a better idea of my background, experience and a better understanding of how we manage the West Links and what our vision going forward is. Chris was the grow-in Course Manager at Castle Stuart and now acts as an Agronomic Consultant.
Left to Right: Kyle (Course Manager), Stuart Bayne (General Manager) and Chris Haspell (Agronomic Consultant).
We were delighted with such a large turnout for an event like this and glad over 50 members wanted to spend their Friday evening listening to our presentations.
Chris spoke about his experiences working in the golf industry, most notably about the construction of Castle Stuart and the amount of work that went into a relatively flat site into a golf course that most people would believe had been there for hundreds of years. One of Chris's most outstanding achievements was getting Castle Stuart back into play for the Scottish Open after torrential rain had caused two landslides on the site. He said that his construction experience that utilized problem-solving skills helped him to lead the team and an army of volunteers to make it look like no landslide had even occurred.
Chris also spoke about his time as Interim Course Manager at North Berwick and the deep love and passion he has for the West Links as well as showing photos from the archives showing some of the changes that have happened at North Berwick in the last 100 or so years.
My presentation started with my career history to date and talked about how I ended up at North Berwick. I showed photos from my time at Gleneagles with some photos from before and during the 2014 Ryder Cup. I then moved on to talk about the team and our vision going forward. We spoke about some of the issues we have on-site and how we plan to tackle these issues.
To finish we spoke about the 17th Bunker project, showing some photos of the poor condition it was in before Chris and Clyde Johnson came in to start the shaping works. We also spoke about how we plan to maintain the bunker to maximise its longevity.
We would like to thank all those who came along - and also those who asked questions, none of which were too hard-hitting (Phew!). Hopefully, there will be more social nights like this for members to enjoy
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