An apprenticeship with a bowling club in 1996 began what has become a 30-year career in greenkeeping for Daniel Metcalfe, who is now head greenkeeper/groundsman at Beverley Park Golf Course.
“Do I wake up every day and think of anything other than coming to work? Nah! I love my job; I love coming to work every day. I’ve got a great bunch of guys [working with me] and that’s the most enjoyable part about coming here every day,” he beams.
“You go out with a plan every day, and the plan is obviously to initially get the course set up for daily competition; however, a rain event or significantly hot day may change your plans. We address those concerns just by managing our staff,” Daniel explains. But the biggest concern? A lack of water. “We use town water and can’t afford to use significant amounts because of the cost on the club, but at the moment we’re managing it pretty well. We’ve had some good weather coming into summer and therefore we’ve got good coverage.”
Water can also be friend or foe to the golfer. “It’s an attribute and a feature of a golf course. We’ve had the challenge of the new creek and pond system, such as overgrowth; when they hit their $6 golf ball into it, they want that ball back! We need to maintain it to a point where they can get that ball back, but also, potentially, they can make a consideration if they want to play out of that creek if there are dry conditions at the time.”
Success for Daniel, however, isn’t measured in lowered handicaps. “I like to sit back and ask ‘Is the course presenting well? Is the course maintained to a tidy standard?’ We can’t spend the time or afford the time to really trick the place up and have beautiful, sexy stripes because of staff numbers and cost, but if I can sit back in the afternoon and go ‘it’s neat, it’s tidy, it’s very well presented’ then that’s all I can ask at this point.”
