Club news

From Dan Lucking, General Manager: I hope that you are all safe and well and trust that you are looking forward to getting back out on the golf course. 

As you may appreciate, the beginning of 2021 has not gone to plan: the weather has been shocking and the severity of the restrictions in place are far beyond what any of us could have expected. 

At long last, however, we have had some great news and we can begin to focus on opening on March 29th. 

Booking will be available to all Members within their current booking times meaning 7-day and Corporate Members on GG membership can book from March 8th. 

Flexible and 5-day Members can book from March 15th; 25-34 year-old Intermediate Members can book from March 19th and 18-24 year-old Intermediates can book from March 22nd.

If you would like to change your category to receive longer lead booking times please contact us in the office.

The steps and dates as set out by the government are as follows:

• March 29: The golf club reopens for four-balls and takeaway food and drink;
• April 12th: Outdoor hospitality opens for groups up to six people on the patio and outdoor area;
• May 17th: The clubhouse opens for indoor hospitality for up to six people, 30-person outdoor hospitality and events can start to take place (with limited numbers);
• June 21st: All areas open without restrictions and large events can take place with no limitations.

Please note that these dates are based on the government guidelines and may change.

Elsewhere, we have plenty to look forward to: we are committed to providing our Members with the best possible experience at Pyrford and a huge amount of work has been taking place during lockdown, so that we have a very exciting summer ahead! 

We have also finalised the schedule for Pyrford’s first “Race to Le Touquet” and there have been some exciting developments on the course outlined below in Richard’s update. 

While the recent weather hasn’t been on our side, it has been a busy few months for Richard and his deputy Matt. They have been able to carry out the essential maintenance at a fantastic rate. Greens, tees and approaches have been tined and dressed with 60 tons of sand, followed by an application of high-quality fertiliser. As he says, the contractors have been back in force as we move ahead with our bunker renovation and redesign plan. Full details can be found on our website here: Pyrford bunker redevelopment front 9

I’m sure you will all agree, these changes will form the foundation of the improvement works at Pyrford and set the stage for a fantastic season ahead. 

I would also like to thank all Members for their continued support. Following the government’s announcement on February 22nd, we now look forward to reopening as soon as possible, and welcoming you all back to the Club.

The Race to Le Touquet

This year we will be running our first “The Race to Le Touquet” where the winners of each section (Men’s and Ladies) receive an invite to Le Touquet at the end of September to play in the Singha Champion of Champions Finals. This is for the winners of each club’s order of merit. The format of each club’s qualifying events is:

• Both Men’s and Ladies’ events are played on the same day.
• Winners of each event at the Club receive prizes supplied by Singha.
• Points are allocated based on where each Member finishes in each event. 
• The number of points rises for each event as the season progresses.
• There are six events between April and September.
• The trip to Le Touquet includes travel, hotels (The 5-star Westminster Hotel), three rounds of golf (Le Touquet and Hardelot), an opening cocktail party, and closing presentation banquet.
• The finalists receive not only the trip but clothing and finalist prizes. The winners of the champions of champions wins an invite to Thailand courtesy of Singha to play golf and entry into an Asia Pro Tour Pro-Am.
• Both trips include, travel, golf and accommodation courtesy of Get Golfing and Singha.  

Historically, Club competitions take place on weekends so that all the different sections — Mens, Ladies and Seniors as well as our 7-day Members who are still working — can join in the fun. Five-day Members are also welcome to play but will have to pay the price of a Member guest green fee.  

Both the Men’s and Ladies competitions take place on the same day with the tee sheet interwoven. This will be followed by a fun prize giving and some special offerings from the kitchen and bar to help bring the day to a close. We would also  encourage Members to invite their partners, who perhaps don’t play, to come along and join in the post-golf fun.

The events are as follows:

• April 3rd: Paul Hart Trophy
• June 19th-20th: Captain’s Cup
• July 3rd: Smart China Cup
• August 7th: Anniversary Cup
• September 4th-5th: Club Championship
• September 18th: Autumn Bowl

Members will also have the opportunity to travel as a team to play at Le Touquet against the other Get Golfing Clubs. We will provide further details of this in due course. 

Subscription news

From Edward Richardson, CEO, Get Golfing: As promised in our email back in January, anyone who has continued to stay with us and pay their membership will receive a credit on their subscription for the period of March 1st to March 28th. 

For a full Member, for example, the way this will work is as follows: When your membership comes up for renewal, you will receive a credit equal to the number of days that we are closed in March. This will be calculated by dividing the annual subscription by 365 days and then multiplying it by the number of days we were closed from March 1st. 

This credit will then be placed on your account when you renew and will be used to reduce your monthly direct debits over the next 12 months.

To help us manage this process, it would be greatly appreciated if Members did not pay their subscription all in advance.

Thank you to everyone who has continued to support the Club, we are doing all we can to ensure you have a wonderful Club and course to come back to and one that continues to improve over the coming years. 

PowaKaddy offer

As we approach the new season, we will be replacing our rental trolleys and we would like to offer members first refusal on our PowaKaddy rental trolleys from 2020, at a special rate of £350. This includes the frame and a 36-hole lithium battery. They were purchased in July 2020 and are in excellent condition. If you are interested, please email me at [email protected]. 

Pro shop

Late last year we said that Get Golfing was developing an online replacement to the traditional, club-based pro shop to give Members access to a truly comprehensive range of golf equipment at very keen prices.

From early April, the Get Golfing Pro Shop will be open for business. As you will see from the spread of logos below, we have secured deals with a terrific range of suppliers. 

We will still sell the day-to-day consumables — such as balls, tees and gloves — on site but, in addition, we will now be able to offer you a wider range of products: from golf clubs, bags, shoes and clothing to lasers, logoed apparel and electric trolleys. 

Practically anything you can buy online will be available from our shop.  

The shop is connected to your Club Card, ensuring you receive the appropriate discounts in line with your membership, which are as follows:

The prices shown on the website for each item include your relevant discount. Practically all products offered receive a discount but there are some items where margins are so tight that we may not be able to give the full discount. Do not despair, however, as we are also committed to offering a price-match guarantee — so if the product is not shown or is shown at a price higher than you have seen elsewhere, call us and we will do our best to match or better it. 

One of the significant benefits, apart from pricing, of our website is that we do not charge shipping on any product. Orders received by midnight on a Sunday will be at the Club ready for collection by the following Thursday. 

All items purchased are paid for through your Club Card, so all you have to do is make sure you have sufficient credit on your card via our simple online top-up facility (which can be done at the time of purchase).    

As we know, your Club has had a challenging time with Covid and lockdowns, so please try to support us by using this service and we will use the profits from your purchases to invest in the Club.

Course News

From Richard Covey, Course Manager: Firstly I would like to wish everybody well and hope that people are staying safe and feeling positive in these tough times and fingers crossed golf will be able to resume very soon.

Below I shall run through some of the works that have been carried out on the course over the past few weeks. Some of you may have walked the course recently or seen our social media pages, so you will already have witnessed a lot of the changes we have made.   

Although weather conditions are still not really favouring construction work, the fact that the golf course was free from golfers for the time being meant that we thought it would be a good time to continue our bunkers project.

February 9th saw the contractors return to working on the bunkers on the back 9 and, as I write this report, they are currently working their way around the bunkers on the front 9. Full details of the plans can be found on our website: Pyrford bunker redevelopment front 9 

Here are just a few pictures of some of the work that has been carried out.

There is still plenty of work to be carried out after the initial construction of the bunkers has been completed.

• Any bunkers that we know lie wet will be drained;
• Bunkers will be lined with the rubber crumb;
• Some bunkers will need to have a revetted turf edge around them and the surrounding areas will also be turfed or hydro-seeded. 

This will all be done in-house, so please be patient as there will be areas of GUR for a period of time. The greenkeeping staff will do their best to get the full course back in to play as quickly as possible. 

We also carried out maintenance to our greens, collars/approaches and tee surfaces during February. Following the hollow core in November the surfaces have had a 13mm solid tine to allow air into the soil profile, we will then seed the weak areas on tees and approaches and top dress all surfaces.

Light aeration and regular top dressings will continue through the lockdown period and throughout the year.     

Hopefully I will see you all out on the golf course very soon and again please stay safe.

Captain’s update 

From Tony Brunt, Men’s Captain: As I sit here typing, BJ is mustering his bluster that we’ve all grown (groan?!) accustomed to ready to deliver the all-important road out of perdition speech….and our path on to the golf course! Leaked sound bites indicate an Easter blast off with four-balls, but a tantalizing “Dunlop Tour soft” thrown out there, two-balls from early March? Who knows right now, that includes BJ I expect, still perhaps we can assume we are closer to start the Great Pyrford Trophy train (caveated with we all know what to assume makes….!).

This will mean that already your competitions and general entertainment management team will need to rearrange planned events! No big deal, just bear with us that short notice and event changes may dog the start of the early season. 

Kick off was going to be a mid-March Spring Foursomes, now to be moved to April of course. This means the famous Paul Hart Trophy planned for start of April will need to shifty on a bit later in April. This event is dear to our hearts for two reasons (no Smudge not coz you won it last year): it is our founding Captain’s cup so sought after to win! Also it is the first in the points-counting series for the Get Golfing Race to Le Touquet, a group-wide, season-long competition to win a trip to compete in the French metropolis of the same name. Two good reasons to be on form, so get wearing grooves in that carpet!

I am told by our infamous club manufacturing Ben (WS) that he has become a golfing god in his garden nets, nice. We shall see how that translates Ben. Many of us can still picture the viral images of one Mr Buckland and his (ridiculously small) garden net…suffice to say not much translation took place in his case. It’s just a game so I’m told and one should play for the fun of it. If you are Job maybe. Perhaps the best practice one can do is the PGA Tour thumb!? Not sure popping up anything on the golf course can really help, but it seems to work for Tyrell Hatton and there’s less risk involved!

As many of you walking to the course will have seen, work has recommenced after the inclement conditions over January and it is moving on at a pace with bunker renovations. Even adding new ones! Great stuff. Whilst they do make sense, Pyrford is such an easy course (!), we may now have to play certain holes differently. The 7th for example, er, oh dear, a long water drive or bunker! Something for us to relish upon our return to the promised land.

As a note to all of the FF (Friendly Fiver) thrill seekers, I have not forgotten that there is a seasonal FFOOM to announce and dish out plaudits (both verbal and meaningless, plus the meaningful digital beer vouchers!) to the great and the good (and the lucky). I will do this in due course via my usual email to the FF group when we are going to resume life again. I was thinking it would be more exciting as a precursor to starting the new FF season, rather than a big thick fat sorry line under the last season. Spring eternal rather than winter hibernation! However if you’ve not already looked on the ig app, it’s listed in all the majesty you would expect from the FF.

When it became clear this lockdown was to be of a frustrating duration, the winter KO series competitions were cancelled and money returned to your ig comp accounts. As we start again, the Summer KO series will be set up and will start as soon as is reasonably feasible, hooray! Keep ’em peeled as we start to list competitions for us all to book in to, these KO ones in particular need to be drawn asap so we can aspire to the finals being actually held in the summer!

Meanwhile, use this time to tune your golfing muscles, rewatch your favourite YouTube swing coaches and get that rock-still-head putting motion honed. Soon there will only be enough physical and mental capacity for golf…..and, if we are God’s chosen ones..beer! Live the dream.

Captain T

Staff news

Get Golfing Apprenticeships: Despite the day-to-day challenges thrown up by Covid and the lockdowns over the past 12 months, you may be interested to learn that Get Golfing has been working to put together a personal development programme for staff. 

This includes engaging with the government’s Kickstart programme to help individuals aged between 18 and 25 to get a foot on the career ladder. 

We will be looking to hire between three to five staff on a six-month contract through this programme to help us on the course and in the clubhouse. 

The goal is to help some of these individuals find long-term jobs and careers within the golf and food and beverage industry and to that end we will also be introducing apprenticeships towards the end of the year. Hopefully some of the Kickstart candidates from earlier in the year will progress onto these apprenticeships.

Get Golfing Internships: Finally, the condition of our golf courses is paramount to benchmarking Get Golfing’s progress and critical to our delivery of that goal is the motivation, education and professionalism of our green staff. 

To encourage their career development, we have launched an internship programme with Pelican’s Nest Golf Club, near Tampa in Florida. Four staff from across our group will benefit from a three-month training and life experience programme with the highly experienced management of this 36-hole, Fazio-designed private Members’ club. Get Golfing will pay all their travel, accommodation and wages during their internship. Applications from staff will be assessed during the third quarter of this year and we will let you know who the lucky beneficiaries are in due course.

Pro news

From Andrew Blackman, Head Golf Professional ( PGA 25 years): We now have a plan for reopening the club from the end of March, hallelujah!!

As a result, I expect the coaching side of the business to be very busy which is why I’m posting some dates for your diaries for coaching activity going into April. We are a little restricted in group classes of five people only (me being the sixth person) so please book your place early to avoid disappointment. All lessons will be performed under government guidelines, social distancing, sanitising etc

Short game master classes: I imagine quite a few of you have suffered from lack of practice during the lockdown but have watched many tips online regarding short game shots around the green.

With that in mind, I’ve devised some Short Game Master Classes to help you become a prolific chipper and pitcher around the greens. There’s lots to chat about and practice during the class and there will be lots of interaction to aid your learning and reduce your scores. The classes run for 2.5 hours and are for a maximum of five people.

There’s nothing to lose apart from shots from your handicap, so please book early by email [email protected] or call/txt 07977 652798. The cost is £60 per person to include refreshments and ProV1 practice balls. Dates and times as follows:

• Saturday, April 3rd: 3pm-5.30pm
• Tuesday, April 6th: 3pm-5.30pm
• Thursday, April 22nd: 9.30-12pm
• Sunday, April 11th: 10am -12.30pm
• Friday, April 30th: 3pm-5.30pm

Getting back to golf: For the first two weeks in April on Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m offering a discounted price for a 30 minute coaching session of £25 to help you ‘knock off some rust’ and get in the swing of things again under supervision. Times will be available all day but I’m expecting the uptake to be quick so please book early.

Sand school: Want lower your scores? Come along to Sand School and learn how to make more sand saves with good knowledge and technique. Max five people, one-hour session, £15 per person, please book ahead.

• Wednesday, April 7th: 1.30pm-2.30pm
• Tuesday, April 13th: 12pm-1pm
• Saturday, April 24th: 3pm-4pm

Hybrid hype: What’s all the hype about hybrid clubs? What are they for and why the pros use them. Join this FREE members clinic to find out how to use hybrids for maximum effect. Please book your place.

•  Thursday, April 8th: 10am-11am
•  Saturday, April 17th: 1pm-2pm

Junior Golf at Pyrford

Gus Mottershead and Andrew Blackman will be starting Junior classes at Pyrford GC on Saturdays in April. With a maximum of six juniors per class (Ages 5 – 17), the price for the four-week course is £50.

Timings for the classes will be:

• 09:00 – 10:00 (Ages 5-11)
• 10:00 – 11:00 (Ages 5-11)
• 11:00 – 12:00 (Ages 5-11)
• 13:00 – 14:00 (Ages 12-17)
• 14:00 – 15:00 (Ages 12-17)

The dates of the classes will be:

• April 3rd
• April 10th
• April 17th
• April 24th

Gus Mottershead is a fully qualified PGA Professional who teaches juniors with a fun and skills-based learning philosophy. He started the junior programme at Hampton Court Palace GC from scratch two years ago, building it into a thriving section with lots of enthusiastic kids playing a game that they had not considered beforehand.

To sign up for the junior classes please contact Gus directly at [email protected] or call him on 07507682969 or Andrew at [email protected] or call. on 07977 652798.

Seniors and Ladies Clinics

Seniors and Ladies group classes will continue again from Tuesday, March 30th (Seniors) and Wednesday, March 31st (Ladies). These classes are very relaxed and a lot of fun! We will continue to pick different aspects of the game weekly to aid your enjoyment and scoring.

• Seniors every Tuesday from 10am-11am to include tea/coffee, coaching and balls: £15
• Ladies every Wednesday from 10am-11am to include tea/coffee, coaching and balls: £15

As we are restricted to five people in a group please book to reserve your place, open to your guests and friends too. Please book by email or text 07977 652798 [email protected]

So there’s a few things to wet your appetites for when you come back to our great game! Remember, one-to-one lessons are always available and the best way to progress and achieve your goals. What’s your goal for 2021? I’m always here for a chat about your game and goals which in turn lead to more smiles.

Feel free to sign up to my emails on game improvement and special offers at www.andrewblackmangolf.co.uk and follow me on Instagram and Facebook.

Hope to see you soon around the club and for all our new Members feel free to say hi and join in with the classes, an excellent way to meet new people!

Real Golf 

We are pleased to announce our partnership with REAL GOLF. Richard and his team of professionals will be running clinics throughout the year. Starting with chipping masterclasses and putting schools from April. 

These REAL GOLF schools create the ultimate golf-learning experience. With a maximum of four students, these carefully structured sessions create the finest environment to improve your golf fast!  

To book in or find out more information please visit https://real-golf.org/pyrford-golf-club/

Win a Golfbreaks.com break!

Get Golfing partner Golfbreaks.com has teamed up with Mizuno Pairs Tour to provide the chance to win some truly unbelievable prizes when you enter a Golfbreaks UK Pairs Tour event or the Golfbreaks Match Play this summer. 

European Tour, Solheim Cup, Open Qualifier and PGA venues across the UK feature in the schedule at great value prices. 

You and your playing partner are guaranteed a very warm welcome from the Golfbreaks team, a fun day out on the fairways and the opportunity to win a trip at one of the world’s finest golf destinations should you finish top of the leaderboard!

Every winning prize destination across the schedule is of the highest quality. Trips to Dubai, Dominican Republic, Portugal, France & Spain are all up for grabs with PGA TOUR, European Tour and Ryder Cup host courses part of the experience. Golfbreaks says it has gone all out with more than £30,000 worth of prizes to play for across the year and the top five pairs at every event taking home a prize!

Take your pick at Golf Breaks’ great value events below and enter here: