Summer Sports - Bowls
When it comes to ‘The Green’, Crown Green Bowlers are a notoriously difficult group to please - ask one hundred bowlers for an opinion and you will almost certainly receive one hundred different responses. So, how does the bowls greenkeeper attempt to meet the expectations of the club membership? In fact, how does he even know what those expectations are?
Mark Allen, of Amenity Land Solutions, seeks out the answers from two of the best bowls greenkeepers in the Birmingham area
M
y first position of responsibility within turfcare came in the early 1990s. As a keen Crown Green bowler with a leading Birmingham club, my long
summer university vacation provided the seasonal free time to help out as an unpaid ‘grass cutter’.
Despite a thirst for knowledge, it was difficult to find any information at all on bowls greenkeeping P.I. (pre-internet). My education was derived from golf-based literature, the odd friendly salesman (yes, odd and friendly in that order!) and some rather questionable bowls green folk-law. Notwithstanding the clubs position at the pinnacle of the Midlands bowls scene, a clutch of County players within the ranks and a regular venue for cup finals and inter-county matches, the maintenance of the green was entrusted to a nineteen year old novice - a ‘willing soldier’, but lacking anything resembling ‘experience’. I now realise that a willing soldier is usually the best that most bowls clubs can hope to attract - anything resembling experience is a bonus.
At that time, when it came to the bowling green, the mentality of the membership was very much one of ‘shave it short and make it fly’ - which was okay, up to a point. However, that point was reached in the drought year of 1995, when we shaved it short and watched it die!
So followed a couple of years of hard
work, mixed in with a fair amount of luck (how we all need that) but, most importantly, a genuine interest in the subject. Eventually, a surface was produced that we could all be proud of, given the minimal kit and meagre budget ... and we were one of the better-off clubs! My overriding memory of that era was trying to convince the membership that the green didn’t need to turn yellow to be a ‘good home green’.
The situation today is much better - certainly the majority of top flight clubs in the Warwickshire and Worcestershire County Bowling Association (Greater Birmingham’s largest bowls league) have excellent playing surfaces, and the ‘cut it short’ mentality has been replaced with a far more enlightened approach. Knowing many of the bowls guys well, I
recently took the opportunity to catch up with a couple of them, to get their views on managing not only their greens but also the expectations of their membership.
My first call was to the much-admired
George Bowling Club at Warley. Straddling on the Birmingham /Black country border, ‘The G-men’ have been the Midlands team to beat for at least the last twenty years. The man charged with giving them a surface to match their reputation, Eric Winstone, cuts a formidable figure around the club. A former Warwick & Worcester County player, Eric has strong views on
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Perfection - and the better it is, the better!
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