The Seymour Golf Club is driving for change in terms of membership numbers.
When it comes to female members especially, Seymour has had a slump since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the female captain of the club, Glenda Woods, is hoping for a turnaround.
Woods has been a member of the club since September 1981 and has taken up different roles throughout that time.
“I had never been a member of a club before but I was living in Seymour for that year and I’ve been a member there ever since,” she said.
“This is my second stint (as female captain). My first one was in 2012 or 2013, somewhere around there for a couple of years.
“Irene Davey had done it for quite a few years and she needed a break, and I said I would do it again.
“The numbers are down a bit (in terms of female members). We maybe have 20 on the ground at the moment. The pandemic just sort of caused a few issues.
“We play comp on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the women can also play Friday night in the six-hole comp in winter and it’s a nine-hole comp in the summer. If there’s not enough women, we join in with the men.”
Woods is also the Country District teams manager for the Dalhousie District Golf Association, and is also in charge of its publicity.
The Yea local is also involved with the Rotary Club and as Woods describes, giving her time to several causes limits what she can do at the golf club in terms of getting young people involved.
“There’s a few junior boys but sadly no junior girls at the moment,” she said.
“We did have a program running before the pandemic, getting some people interested, but they sort of stopped and we haven’t picked it up again.
“I feel a little bit guilty sometimes, as I’m involved in quite a lot of other things and you have to have a lot of time to recruit new people — and it’s not just getting them started, it’s following up.
“We’d love to (have more juniors). It’s the future of the club.
“With current financial things and people being time poor, golf isn’t something that people perhaps consider, and it costs a bit of money and you need a bit of time.
“The membership is probably at the lowest it’s been since I’ve been there (at the Seymour Golf Club).
“That’s not just indicative of our club, golf clubs in particular are struggling to maintain or increase numbers.
“It seems to me that the younger age group, 20- to 30-year-olds, don’t commit to joining clubs so much as they might once have done.
“Quite a lot of people have a Golf Australia membership, where they pay to have a membership with that, and it allows them to play in competitions and they don’t actually join a club.”
While the Seymour Golf Club has a good amount of players on course each week paying the greens fees and hiring the carts, Woods says the majority of people don’t commit to the club with memberships, which are what what keep clubs financially afloat.
While all these players love the course, what keeps Woods coming back is the people.
“I do love playing golf but for me, who’s lived in Yea for most of the time I’ve been a member at Seymour, it’s allowed me to be connected to two towns,” she said.
“It’s the friendships you form — I could have gone across to different clubs but (I like) to come back to the same people you played with last week and those continued friendships.
“At the district events that I play at once a week during the summer I constantly meet new people and they become great friends as well.”
In terms of on-course highlights, scoring a couple of holes in one is up there for Woods but she humbly suggests they were just a bit of luck.
You can find Woods volunteering at the club on a regular basis, with a number of other people who contribute their time to the club.
“We are just a bunch of friendly people and we’re a small club run by volunteers,” she said.
“I am one of the people who run the bar on every second Wednesday shift, there’s about six of us on the bar.
“There’s a few guys who mow the course and do stuff, and it’s very much a team effort.
“We all do what we can to keep the club running.”