Colmworth Golf Club are renowned for two things – award-winning sustainability projects and an all-female team, including Co-Owner Tilly Vesley and PGA Advanced Fellow, Adrienne Engleman. Here, Tilly Vesely explains the Bedfordshire club’s winning concept.
Run through the list of staff members on Colmworth’s website and you’ll discover something that must be unique in the UK golf world.
Take away the Bedfordshire-based golf club’s greenkeepers and you’ll note the entire team is female. Mother and daughter Julie and Tilly Vesely own and run the club – they’ve been there since the very start in 1991.
Clubhouse manager Joy is joined by chef Laura, with Jas, Claire, Jackie, Violet, Morgan, Izzy and Linda among the core staff.
In a sport that’s massively male dominated – some 85 per cent of golf club members are men – and a management structure that often reflects that, the make-up of Colmworth’s staff is unusual to say the least.
And it’s that happy coincidence that has helped drive Tilly and team to approach everything from that angle - looking at everything from teeing it up, to membership, to dress codes, and the very welcome golfers receive in the clubhouse, through altered perspectives.
You might have heard of the club because of their burgeoning trophy cabinet. That’s nothing to do with what golfers have achieved out on the course, more what’s being done to protect the environment.
It wasn’t always plain sailing.
“I’m not going to lie. It’s a hell of a lot easier now than it was in our early days. The switch came probably in about 2012 when we just thought, ‘we’re not your average golf course. Let’s stop trying to be average’.
“Of course we want the golf course to be exceptional, but we’re a business too - and a business that needs to survive the peaks and troughs of life, recessions and even a global pandemic! When you stop trying to be like everyone else and find your own niche it can only be a good thing!"
“We used to have people coming in and saying, ‘well, they don’t do it like this at other golf courses’. But over time, we began to feel confident that we were OK with that - now our unique approach is loved and it’s what everyone shouts about.”
Tilly had been an osteopath, running a clinic and helping out in the business, before Covid arrived, and she felt compelled to help the club through that difficult period.
“We don’t have specific job roles within the business,” she explained. “I can be found in meetings with our manager and head greenkeeper formulating plans for the golf course, menu, holiday cottages and events or sat at a computer designing adverts, composing newsletters and even, on occasion, driving the digger to help with work out on the golf course itself. When it comes to business decisions, I run everything past my mum. She still comes up with a lot of ideas and she’s still very much involved.
“We’re partners and we’ve got an amazing team below us making all the harebrained things we come up with happen.”
While membership at Colmworth remains majority male, the club’s ethos is mixed and female membership is growing – particularly among younger audiences and those in the mid-20s range.
“She’s just awesome. I can’t keep up with her titles now. I think she’s voted a top 50 pro. She’s great fun. Adrienne has been with us a long time. She loves it here because of our approach and she just fits in so well. People just feel comfortable with her.
“We’ve just had somebody come from having lessons with her who is now signed up for a three-month pass on the Par 3 course, building her confidence as the first stepping stone before venturing out onto the main course.
“Adrienne’s coming from the same place as us. Golf is a hobby. It’s supposed to be fun. You’re supposed to enjoy yourself. Of course, you need rules and etiquette, but we just need to come into the 21st century and let people enjoy themselves a bit more.”
Tilly added: “I understand different clubs have traditions. Tradition has a place and we’re not trying to completely bat that out.
“We just live in such a high-pressured world now that people deserve to be able to switch off and be comfortable now and again too!”
So they will continue to be different at Colmworth. Because once they stopped trying to ‘just’ be a club, they evolved into something that has bonded members and visitors together and is intriguing the wider golfing community.
“I love the place,” Tilly said. “It’s our life. It’s unlikely to make us millionaires, but for us, that isn’t what it is about.
“I mean, I was playing shop probably aged about 14 behind the bar. Really, I can’t imagine life without it.”
