“We’ve gone from 10,000 rounds of golf a year to 35,000 in six years”

Over the last six years head greenkeeper Michael Burgin and course manager Matthew Cressey have transformed Normanby Hall Golf Course in Lincolnshire with the help of a dedicated team.

They talk about their ambitious renovation projects including major bunker work, the social value of golf and why long-term planning is key to their reputation as one of England’s best municipal courses.

Could you tell us about how you got into the industry and your development in the profession?

Head greenkeeper Michael Burgin: I’ve been playing golf since I was 10 years old and started greenkeeping when I got a summer job aged 15 at the Forest Pines country club. When the summer work ended, the head greenkeeper asked me: “when do you want to start?” I said, “straight away”, and just progressed from there. I did my NVQ level 2 and spraying qualifications and just fell in love with it. I left Forest Pines after about five years and got an assistant job at Normanby and progressed through the years until the head greenkeeper position became available, and Matt thought I was the man for the job. The course was struggling a bit at the time and they wanted someone to take it on and change things.

Course manager Matthew Cressey: My path has been very different to Michael’s. My career has been in local authority leisure facilities like gyms and swimming pools since I was 17. I’ve progressed from duty manager roles, to area facility manager roles and now I’m a senior facility manager for North Lincolnshire Council. I was approached to take over the management and oversight of the course temporarily when it was going through a difficult time. Working with people like Michael who take ownership of what they do meant I ended up getting the golf bug and I’m still here now! There were clear transferable skills I could use from working in leisure to golf, such as knowing how to promote the health benefits. Together I think we’ve produced a really good product.

How big is your team and how do you manage the workload between you?

Michael: There are five full-time greenkeepers on my team. When I first took over there were two of us, so we’ve come a long way since then. We recruited and got a team in place who are all passionate about the course, which makes my job a lot easier. We’re probably looking to recruit one more next year. It’s a big course and six would be ideal and free me up to do more planning and organising.

What do you enjoy most about the job and what would you say is your biggest achievement in the role so far?

Michael: For me it’s the satisfaction of seeing something I’ve created. I’m very into my golf, so to be able to present something I can be proud of to other golfers is a big plus. The fact that we’re progressing the course all the time and trying to make something that’s already good even better is something I enjoy. I love projects and will happily take on anything from laying irrigation lines, to drainage. I also enjoy the planning of projects and drawing designs.

I’ve been lucky enough to go abroad a lot with my work. In 2015 I was one of the first to be selected to do the TPC Sawgrass John Deere Scholarship scheme in Florida. I’ve been back there six times! I did an Open at Royal Birkdale and this year I was at the JCB Club for the LIV Golf tournament. It was a whole different ball game there; that course is phenomenal. I wouldn’t say I’m fully for it, but it was great to experience it. It’s helped me massively to see how other clubs do things and take ideas back.

I think our biggest achievement in the last few years has been growing the membership and becoming more sustainable. When Matt joined us we had about 170 members, now we have 485.

Matthew: I’ve certainly enjoyed working with the team here because their dedication is inspirational. I like the member engagement part of the job, too. We have greens’ committees and liaison meetings with the members and their involvement in the operation and development of the course has been key. We do member surveys to help us work out what projects to focus on next. We do things differently because we’re a municipal golf course, so we’re open to both visitors and members and have to think about what each group needs. A lot of clubs are competing for the same market, but we can go in a different direction and that seems to be working. Participation is up from 10,000 rounds of golf a year on average in 2018, to around 35,000. That’s a mixture of visitors, members, societies, charity events and so on. Everybody’s playing golf!

One of our biggest achievements is that we haven’t gone for making things look nice for a short period of time. We’ve made long term investments such as big drainage projects and things that keep us open 12 months a year. It takes a really heavy downpour to shut this golf course now.

Normanby Hall is considered one of the best municipal courses in the country. How do you keep standards so high?

Michael: It takes a lot of man hours and a lot of planning to keep standards high. I treat the course as if it’s my own and if something doesn’t look right, I change it. Because I’ve been to so many of the top courses I know exactly how I want things to look. One of the first things we invested in was a new fleet of equipment. That’s helped massively with presentation.

Matthew: When you approach the full membership you can see what the general consensus is and you can start to prioritise tasks. We’re never going to have a team of 10 greenkeepers on this course but what we can do is create efficiencies. Durabunker has played a big part in creating efficiencies by giving the greenkeepers back the time they used to spend maintaining bunkers.

Michael: With the amount of renovation we’re doing it’s almost like a full reconstruction and the members are fully on board. They’ve been very understanding about disruption: for instance, we’ve done fairway drainage works at peak time in the summer because it’s the best time to get it done quickly and make the least mess on the course. Every project is presented to the members first so they know what’s going to happen and we’re clear about the improvements they’ll see at the end of it. With the first bunker project we did a full presentation with pictures and concept drawings supplied by Durabunker. We told them exactly what would happen at every step and it reassured them a lot.

Matthew: They were part of the journey and understood the timescales and when any disruption would happen, although we always try to minimise that. It’s important to be honest and transparent. Actually the members aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty themselves!

Michael: There’s a team of about half a dozen members who volunteer to help on every project we do.

What is the most challenging aspect of maintaining the course?

Michael: Going by last winter it’s the weather. At the moment we’re doing quite well weather-wise and I’d like to think last winter was a one-off. We’ve recovered well from the very heavy downpours and it’s shown us that the projects we’ve done, particularly the drainage, have worked.

Matthew: We went from one extreme with drought, to another with an exceptionally wet winter. In leisure you can predict everything from year to year, but golf is under the control of the weather. Fluctuation in prices of materials and fertilisers and so on is also challenging. It’s very difficult to plan when prices are fluctuating all the time.

Michael: With the bunker project we’d done a lot of planning and costing beforehand, including putting drainage into all the bunkers and installing a lot of irrigation to where the new bunker complexes are, too. When Matt and I went through the project we had to plan for 12 months of the year, to make sure they would be playable year-round. We always have to think a long way ahead.

You began a full scale bunker renovation with Durabunker in 2023. What problems did you have with the bunkers beforehand and why did you choose Durabunker for this project?

Michael: A lot of the bunkers here were in the right places, but over the years since the course opened in 1978 they haven’t been managed as well as they could have been. They were getting bigger and bigger and they’d been edged back more and more, to the point where some of them had grown a metre either side. They weren’t really manageable and didn’t have the correct sand in them: it was more of a sandy soil which encouraged weed growth and poor drainage. In the summer sun they’d become rock hard and a lot of man hours were used to keep them in a basic playable state.

We chose Durabunker Ltd to execute the project, because of recommendations from other people who had used the company. The same was true of their synthetic bunker edging product. They looked like the right company for us, so we did some research and got Rhydian Lewis from Durabunker on site. We were really impressed by his knowledge and designs. He saw things we didn’t see. For instance, there were four bunkers around the second and we reduced that to three bunkers, and we’ve put in a big run-off area which looked superb all summer. Rhydian also suggested that we isolate the oak tree at the back of the green more effectively, which has made it a real feature of the hole. That came from Rhydian’s knowledge and we learnt a lot from him. Durabunker were the contractor on the project and were responsible for all design and construction work, including all concepts, bunker shaping and earthworks, drainage, the bunker liner with the assistance of Whitemoss Eco, the Edge installation and tie-in works.

Matthew: Being a local authority course we have to think about sustainability, and the fact that Durabunker repurposes synthetic turf in their bunker edging product was massive to us. It’s an extremely durable product and coupled together with the BunkerMat bunker liner, gave us a complete solution. For us this project was about doing it once and doing it right.

How many bunkers have you completed? Was the installation process straightforward and how did Durabunker support you through the process?

Matthew: We’ve done 13. To have Durabunker Ltd lead the bunker project has been so valuable to us. Rhydian’s vision, not just where the bunkers were concerned, but his perspective on the whole course, has made a massive difference. Durabunker were fully open to us being part of the process and for our greenkeepers to be able to build their CVs on a project like this has been priceless. We’re always looking for ways to upskill our staff.

Michael: The attention to detail and bunker shaping skills of Durabunker’s shaper and their team in general was phenomenal. We weren’t just building a bunker inside our larger bunkers, we had to scrape a long way back to get the flow of the bunker from the fairway and into the green right. This ensured we got the right contours.

Matthew: Durabunker Ltd were great to work with and we would highly recommend them.

Are you pleased with the results and have you had any feedback from golfers about them? How are you planning for the next phase of the project with Durabunker, starting in autumn 2025?

Michael: Even with the 13 bunkers we’ve finished, our bunker maintenance time has already been reduced by 50 percent. Now we can just go to the bunkers, quickly redistribute the sand, strip the top of them, rake them, and that’s it. There’s no time spent tilling the sand, fluffing it back up, spending ages weeding it and using weed killer. They’re perfect and people say they can’t believe the difference.

The 13 we did were the worst bunkers on the course, now they’re the best. The next phase of the project begins in October 2025 and we’ve already started preparation work. We’ve got drainage contractors on site and we’re going to install outlet drainage pipes to the ditches in the vicinity of where the new bunkers will be. We’re also thinking about water supply already. For instance, on the 13th hole we have one sprinkler in the fairway and we’re going to tap into that and create two sprinklers from that supply, which should then water the bunkers as well. It should save us some time and work next year. In five to six years’ time we plan to have done three more Durabunker projects, taking place every other year, and by then we should have covered pretty much the whole course.

The course has seen a lot of investment by the council in recent years to improve tees, upgrade the clubhouse and install a practice area. How important has this been for the future of the club? What plans do you have going forward?

Matthew: We’ve made a lot of improvements but we’ve tried to keep it manageable because we don’t want to charge huge fees. Golf shouldn’t be just for elite golfers; it should be for everybody. Every decision we make is about producing a fantastic product for the long-term.

Michael: The fact that we have the customers coming through the door to the extent we do is proof that we’re finding the right balance.

Matthew: It’s also about social value. We now offer health checks for members, we have specialist sessions for people with neurological conditions such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease and people with mental health conditions. Getting things right on the golf course means we can create a community of people who maybe wouldn’t usually get involved in golf. In that way we’re very different from the standard members’ club.

What would your advice be to other municipal courses who would like to achieve what you have at Normanby Hall?

Michael: I think the key is having the right management in place. You need a head greenkeeper who is passionate and is willing to go above and beyond. It’s also important to have someone like Matt and the people above him, who can find the funding to turn things around in the way we’ve done. If you’re a municipal course and you’re struggling you need to look beyond the course and at how it’s being run.

Matthew: I think it’s also about thinking long-term. If you make quick fixes you’ll end up having the same problems again. Long-term investments in the right places make sense. We also recognise that we can cater to the independent golfer, who may only play once a month and doesn’t want to pay a fortune in green fees at a private members’ club. We can offer them that service, and that’s been a big part of our success.

Michael: As a council-run course we’re not here to make loads of money, just offer service. We see that as a benefit because there aren’t the same pressures to stay open in very bad weather. If the course isn’t playable we will close it and there’s no loss of income. We’re more concerned with protecting the standard of the product and not having a huge repair bill at the end of it. We see our municipal status as a positive thing.