The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Golf on Sale Now
Enville Golf Club is a great example of heathland golf. It is located in the Midlands, England. It boasts two championship courses as well as excellent practice facilities. Last year, in the first of a three-year run, it held the R&A Girls’ U16 Amateur.
At the club’s heart is Heather Mulley. Originally a legal secretary, she was made redundant and her father – a member at Enville – volunteered her services when the secretary’s assistant broke her leg. After returning to her legal profession, she applied for the assistant secretary position. Twenty years later, she’s still there, with eight of the last twenty years as general manager. She was named the GCMA manager of the year in 2019.
Golf has experienced a boom at club level in the last few years. After years of struggle to get women and girls to golf, statistics showed that 25% of female players were new to the sport or had tried it due to the pandemic. Enville was already ahead of the curve: they were one of the first signatories to the R&A’s Women in Golf Charter, and they have been proactive in attracting female members. They have also held Girls Golf Rocks events, as well other taster programmes and participation drives. It is long past the time when it was easy to make things as difficult as possible without spending a lot of money on a golf membership.
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Heather Mulley: “Women must be able to engage their golf club.”
“Like everybody else in the 80s and 90s we had a flourishing women’s section and then it started to dwindle. We felt that something had to be done in 2017. We saw that other clubs were having some success with a women’s academy so that was the first thing we implemented – that was a membership at a reduced rate so it was a get into golf for 12 months. It was group and individual lessons and holes out on the course with a mentor from within the ladies’ section,” Mulley explains. “And that worked extremely well despite the pandemic. That has hopefully attracted some women who had never tried golf before and it was a really welcoming atmosphere.”
Mulley doesn’t play golf but she has used that experience to her advantage; she knows what might put women off who aren’t familiar with the nuances of a golf club and she knows how that might put new members off.
“Your handicap or lack of it doesn’t influence anything. It’s about engagement with the club, a keenness for improvement and to be part the club. You need to look at what your club is like and you need to look at the board and the ladies’ section themselves. They must create a welcoming environment, and ours does. They’re very conscious of what it’s like to be a new member – I asked them what the most daunting thing was and they would say walking into the changing rooms for the very first time and wondering if they would have anyone to play with.
“We introduced being able to play 72 holes when joining the academy, that doesn’t sound a lot but, as a beginner, it can really help and you can do two or three holes at a time and that helps to sustain your interest. We’ve also introduced blue tees on both courses which helps with the juniors and men and women members.”
Mulley has gone out to local businesses to explain the benefits of golf and the opportunities for networking – “men have been taking advantage of these things for years and women don’t seem to have used it”. Like any forward-thinking club they are also focusing efforts on the juniors.
“We have gone into six local schools so we are introducing kids who have never played before. This has allowed us to attract 15 juniors. One parent mentioned that her daughter had tried football, ballet, horse riding, and football, and now she loves golf. She might never have considered it before.”
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