Fit For All Seasons

Much hard work goes on during the year to keep our courses in tip-top shape. Jeremy Ellwood spent a morning on the fairways at West Hill in Surrey with course manager, Ben Edwards, to find out more…

We all turn up at the club every week expecting everything to be just so, often forgetting what goes in to making our courses such lovely places to play. Some of this hard work goes unnoticed, of course, as much green keeping takes place unseen, while many of us are still in the land of nod. 

To find out more about the green keeping year, I spent a morning out on West Hill’s beautiful heath land course in Surrey with course manager, Ben Edwards, and his hardworking team. I have to be honest, Ben looked a tad young to be in charge.

“When I left school I didn’t really have a great idea as to what I wanted to do,” Ben explains. “I decided to go to Florida to work for three months – not in golf, but I started playing golf, and became quite passionate about it. I came back, applied for a green keeping role at Sand Martins Golf Club in Berkshire with no experience, and got the job as a trainee. Within 18 months, I was offered the deputy course manager’s job when I was only 20. From there, I was fortunate that my boss went back to New Zealand to be a course manager, and I got offered the course manager’s job when I was 23.”