Golf
“
There’s not a lot of kids grow up saying they want to be a greenkeeper, is there? It’s hard to get them motivated for early mornings and the like, but I always was
Following the flood came the snow
afford it. There are two volunteers who maintain those, and one is finishing soon. So, we’re going to have to sort some new arrangement out, but I’m not sure what right now.” Even with that spending limit being touched, the course is ranked amongst Warwickshire’s best. Ashley is proud of its state:
“What’s great is that we’ve gone from strength to strength every year. Last year was very good, and the membership was happy with the greens.”
“That shows with the participation figures and the money that’s been coming in. The last five years has shown constant increases.”
“Last season was the rockiest, however, with a lot of club politics that come with the multi‐sport set‐up. We nearly folded momentarily, not because of the golf club, but the larger entity.”
“That may not have happened at one time, however, and I think that links with the decline of golf over the years and people’s need to turn up just to play nine holes while they’re busy.”
“It used to be a very exclusive club and might then have kept the whole thing afloat. Then, there was a lull. But, over the past five years, the club has really pushed the pay‐ and‐play market, and we’ve reaped the benefits. It’s gone very well.” Ashley joined the club straight out of secondary school and has been there for eleven years. His last year of school was set up in a manner which gave the pupils free Fridays, which allowed him the opportunity to get some work experience (when he perhaps should have been revising for exams).
Ashley Bulpitt 22 I PC APRIL/MAY 2018
He felt that some of the lessons were inapplicable to him, so approached the school with a direct request to spend his Fridays greenkeeping at Copsewood, telling them that he knew where his future lay. “There’s not a lot of kids grow up saying they want to be a greenkeeper, is there? It’s
hard to get them motivated for early mornings and the like, but I always was.” His golfing handicap is three, which he modestly called “alright”, before going on to inform me that he’d broken all sorts of club records, as well as winning most of the club’s competitions in the past couple of years, including the scratch Club Championship eight years in a row. “We have a series of competitions, and I won all of them this year, which was nice,” he said, “so now they’re all coming for me.” There have been two head greenkeepers above Ashley since he started at the club, Pat leaving about a year‐or‐so in, and Gary for a few years after, but said that he doesn’t have industry role models beyond this, and that he doesn’t feel the need for a specific greenkeeping ideology.
The one proviso to this is that he attempts to bring through one major development to the course each year. This year, this is the renovation of a vehicular bridge over the river.
They removed 400 sleepers from the old bridge which had rotted due to the length of time which they had festered. These are being replaced with concrete and will provide stability for utility vehicles etc. The team is also carrying over the remainder of a bunker redevelopment project from last winter; re‐shaping and filling those by the fourth and seventh greens.
Ashley is a born‐and‐bred Coventry boy from “two minutes down the road”, and described Coventry as “alright… The City of Culture, I suppose.”
“On the way to my house, if you turn right out of the club’s car park, is where the old clubhouse used to be. It is a huge, three‐ storey manor‐type building.”
“About ten years ago, British Land, who owned it, said they were claiming it back. Now, it’s being converted into luxury apartments.”
The course is a 72‐par over just under fifty acres and runs to 6,048 yards from the white
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