Andy Rideout on managing Bramshaw

Meet the MANAGER

The Forest Course at Bramshaw

Tell us how you became a golf club manager… I’ve always been a golfer. I’ve had a golf club in my hands since I was about two. I was playing off scratch by the time I was 16 and played county golf. I really wanted to turn professional, and worked in a pro shop for a winter, but decided it wasn’t for me. I went back to college, went to university, got a degree in sports science, and ended up spending seven years as a lifeguard.

At that point, I thought ‘what are you doing with your life?’ I had a look around and eventually picked up a golf administration job at Duxbury Golf Club, Hotel and Spa, in Ferndown, near Bournemouth.

I spent a couple of years there and then I had an opportunity to apply for the general manager’s position at Bramshaw. I didn’t think I’d get it. I didn’t really think I had enough experience on the management side of things but the owner obviously saw something in me and decided to give it a shot. I’ve now been here for three and a half years.

What did you learn from lifeguarding you could bring into golf club management? People skills. When you’re a lifeguard you deal with all sorts of people – probably very similar

With Andy Rideout, general manager at Bramshaw, in Hampshire

to a golf club, really. It’s nice to be able to judge people’s characters as well to know how you need to speak to them.

I imagine you’d have learned a lot about crisis management? Lifeguarding is all about being proactive rather than reactive and I think it’s actually very similar to the golf industry – if you can prevent things happening before they occur, it’s probably the best way to go about it. I never got in the water once. Apart from training, I never had to rescue anyone.

So I would like to think if you can be proactive in any walk of life it’s going to save you a lot of time down the road.

Tell us about Bramshaw… We’ve got two courses in the New Forest. Our Forest Course is the oldest in Hampshire. The club was founded in 1880. The then owners decided to build another 18 holes, in land they owned, and the Manor Course was built in 1971.

We’ve got the best part of 1,200 members over the two courses so we’re probably doing something right. It’s a really nice place to work. The New Forest is a great place to work anyway but the members make it really special because they’re always so positive about it. They seem to keep coming back year after year.

Tell us a little bit about your

Andy Rideout

management style. How do you like to run Bramshaw? Do you empower teams? Are you hands on? Do you spend time with the members or are you more focused on admin and detail? I think a good manager has to be all of those things. You will get some managers, and some golf clubs, who are more just about the administration and others who are all about their members.

I think, at a proprietary business, although we’ve got a very big

The Manor Course at Bramshaw

membership base, you have to be a bit of all of that.

You have to be the admin person. You have to be the guy who goes out and talks to the members.

In terms of my staff, I like to give them sense of ownership. So, when it comes to the F&B staff, for example, I tell them to get involved: talk about the menus, talk about how you want to evolve, what your service is about.

I’ll have my inputs. But, actually, you’re the guys on the floor. You’re the guys talking to members. You’re the guys taking their money. How do you want to run the business as best for you and best for the members?

I sit in an office for a lot of time – even though I try to get up and about – and I don’t see all the time how the business is working.

So I use my staff to give me feedback on how they think the business is running. Members will talk to my staff up in the bar more than they will talk to me – because they are the people they get to see.

They’ll talk to the pros, they won’t come to the manager, because that’s just the way golf clubs are.

I talk to the pros about what’s going on in the day, what members are saying, what they like and what they don’t like. It’s taking all that on board and trying to gauge what the feeling is around the club.

Staff are so important. If you’ve got a good staff behind you, you can rely on them to feed things back to you and to give you ideas and it makes your job so much easier.

You’ve been through an unprecedented period as all managers have over the last year. Are you optimistic about the future post-Covid? I think the club is looking in great shape. We have a sale on the horizon, which is going to be great to bring a bit of oomph to the future and new ideas and new investment. Golf, generally, is in a pretty good place. Being one of the main sports that has been open when we’re not in lockdown periods, it’s been great to see new people come into the game. When golf reopened last May, we had a lot of new golfers coming to the course – especially the Forest Course, which was our easier course. It’s brought even more people back into membership. People have seen the value of memberships because a lot of golf clubs have put members first.

Golf, in general, is in a very good position. People have said it’s back to the same popularity it had in the mid ‘90s. I was only a kid back then and I wouldn’t really know.

But if that’s the sense of scale – when they were opening courses left, right and centre – if that’s the same level of participation, then when you hear people say golf is a declining sport, it’s very obviously not. People still love it.

Get In Touch To contact Bramshaw, visit branshawgolfclub.co.uk