Summer Sports - Bowls “All the research and
Graham Robinson using a penotrometer to measure the strength of the soil on the green at the Cranleigh Club. It is part of his own personal array of equipment he takes with him for testing a club's playing surface. Soil corer, laser level tester and even a stopwatch to measure to speed of bowls are amongst the kit that travels with him on visits
“There is no real money in bowls, so we hitch a ride on the results of golf’s huge funding”
development for materials and equipment, of course, comes via the golf industry,” says Graham. “There is no real money in bowls, so we hitch a ride on the results of golf ’s huge funding. No getting away from it, we are very much a poor relation. Clubs more and more have to ‘beg, steal or borrow’ when it comes to looking after greens. What the Bowls England service offers is free to member clubs and, at the very least, it can point them in the right direction. Very often, it can save them a lot of money.” “I’ve just visited Croydon for Bowls England, and there used to be twelve greens run by the council there. Last year, it decided to cut this number by half. I reckon there are something like 350 bowlers and they’d been paying £90 (£60 for pension age) for a year’s membership, enabling them to play on their local green - or any one of the other Croydon greens for that matter. I estimate that income to the council would have been in the region of £21,000 to £26,000, which is a long way short of the £88,000 which, the council says, it was shedding out annually for the upkeep of the twelve greens.
This adds up to what can only be described as a recession for bowls greens.” “The work is now being done
by three dedicated greenkeepers and outside contractors at an annual cost per green of £8,000. They are doing an excellent job, it has to be said, but it still leaves Croydon bowlers with more money to find for fewer greens, and the council losing cash - something like £30,000 a year, too.” The problem boils down to kit and know-how for clubs trying to keep a decent playing surface within budget. If a club can afford a reasonable mower, and there’s a willing hand or two from within the membership, keeping the three or four cuts a week during the season in house, it can be quite a money saver. Equipment for other routines, like aeration,
scarifying, spraying and seeding, and the skills to carry them out properly will, in many cases, have to be put in the hands of a contractor. For know-how, the freely available Bowls England service is a must and a money saver.
It does, at the very least, identify problems and what’s required to deal with them, so
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