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Northwood Golf Club

Improving the Practice Facilities at Northwood Golf Club

For a number of years, the Board has organised an annual survey of the members and every year the practice facilities are highlighted as a major weakness of the club. Due to our restricted footprint, the options for improvement are strictly limited - all we currently have are the short-game area, various designated on-course practice areas and two practice nets that are in urgent need of repair or replacement. Over the years the Board has considered many options, including shortening certain holes to provide practice space and/or removing substantial areas of woodland but these would prove to be prohibitively expensive and would negatively impact the very nature of Northwood Golf Club. The conclusion is that there are only two viable options - to upgrade the practice nets and/or to build an indoor golf simulator which is a high-tech system that allows players to practice or play golf without using the course itself.


Replacement Practice Nets



Situated where the current nets are but hitting away from the clubhouse, this facility will have 3 bays and be 10 metres in length (including the playing area). The players will be protected from the elements by a safe practice facility shelter as below:



The bays will have power supplied to facilitate shot tracker technology and the club is investigating purchasing a Garmin Approach R50 Golf Monitor which will be available to members for practice or virtual rounds - terms to be confirmed.

The nets will be constructed on a timber framed concrete base which is sloped toward the player to facilitate automatic ball return. A substantial amount of earthwork will be required and a number of trees will need to be removed or trimmed to ensure the structure is not overhung by foliage. The nets will extend into the rough to the right of the first fairway for a few metres requiring the out of bounds to be adjusted slightly.

Indoor Golf Studio

An indoor golf studio uses cameras and ball tracking technology to simulate the flight pattern for each shot, providing many different insights into a player's swing and is ideal for teaching and practice. It can also be used for a number of players to participate in virtual rounds or even golf competitions against one another. Without an obvious internal space in the clubhouse, it would require either a major re-construction of part of the clubhouse complex (for example, re-building the patio with the studio beneath it or converting part of the Gallery Restaurant to house the studio), or erecting a free-standing "pod" opposite the trolley shed next to the putting green.



Conclusions


These two options are not mutually exclusive, nor do they serve the same purpose. Protected outdoor nets can be used for a quick warm-up before a game, an extended practice or teaching session and would typically be unsupervised and require a minimum of maintenance. It would only be usable during daylight hours. A swing studio would require a booking system with sessions typically booked for 30 minutes or an hour, as well as day-to-day management, regular cleaning and maintenance. It could be used at any time that the club is open regardless of daylight hours. The usage pattern for the nets is well understood and the project is considered low risk whilst a swing studio is a higher risk endeavour without any historical data to base our take-up assumptions on.

The cost of a swing studio is substantially higher than that of the nets. A single bay in a pod for example is estimated to cost 30% more than the proposed 3 bay practice net solution and would also involve higher running and maintenance costs. There is more opportunity for a return on investment from the swing studio through charging for its use.

Ideally, the Board would like to provide both solutions for our members but economic realities mean that the required level of capital expenditure would need to be spread over a number of financial years. A number of major Budgetary impacts are predicted to hit the club in the next financial year and there are a couple of potential strategic projects on the horizon which may affect the necessity and/or location of a swing studio.

The Board has therefore decided to plan for three phases of development.

Phase 1: The 3-bay practice nets will be built with work planned to start in the current financial year (2024/25).

Phase 2: Construction of a single bay swing studio. This will not commence until 2026 at the earliest (to allow the circumstances surrounding other strategic capital projects to be better understood) and will be dependent on the club's continued financial health and the development of a robust business plan.

Phase 3: Construction of a second swing studio bay. Highly dependent upon successful implementation of Phase 2 and over-subscription of the facilities. Unlikely to be considered before 2027.






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