Walton Heath Golf Membership, venue for the 2023 AIG Girls’s Open, hosted the primary Girls In Golf Summit on March 31, with the gathering bringing collectively ladies from throughout the UK golf trade with 4 keynote audio system.
The summit, which was arrange by Walton Heath Golf Membership Chief Government Officer Alex Woodward, was hailed an amazing success by greater than 75 ladies who attended.
Woodward stated: “Whereas the general variety of ladies within the golf trade continues to be too low, the variety of leaders in our trade who simply occur to be ladies may be very wholesome. This summit served to focus on these leaders, community and showcase them formally to as many extra ladies as attainable with the aim of facilitating a much bigger wave of involvement sooner or later.”
In attendance have been ladies from membership administration, occasion administration, participant administration, TV & broadcasting, golf structure, agronomy, greenkeeping, gross sales & advertising, sustainability, county governing our bodies, nationwide governing our bodies, worldwide governing our bodies, golf tourism, golf professionals, golf vogue, golf membership manufacturing, golf vitamin, perception assortment, journalism, charities, skilled excursions and extra.
Zoe Ridgway, R&A Championship Director of the AIG Girls’s Open, was one of many summit’s keynote audio system. With a profession spanning 20 years, Zoe shared tales about her time working within the golf trade, highlighting the significance of girls progressing into senior management positions.
The viewers additionally heard from Vicky Cuming, Vice-President and Head of Golf Shoppers at IMG EMEA; Sky Sports activities Golf presenter Inci Mehmet, and Nicole Wheatley, founder of promoting and public relations firm Medi8 Golf, with the whole proceedings offered and hosted by The Jazzy Golfer.
Ridgway stated: “Walton Heath’s Girls in Golf Summit was a superb alternative for ladies working throughout the golf trade to return collectively. It actually highlighted what alternatives are attainable inside golf and I hope that it impressed these in attendance to proceed to aspire in direction of lengthy and profitable careers.”
Vicky Cuming, who has guided the careers of Dame Laura Davies and two-time European Solheim Cup Captain Catriona Matthew, together with present standouts Georgia Corridor and Charley Hull, shared a few of her experiences from managing skilled golfers. Vicky stated afterwards: “The vitality within the room was incredible. Though there’s a step by step growing variety of ladies working within the golf trade, we have to give attention to attracting extra, after which allow them to climb the ladder to turn into leaders. Everybody was eager to contribute and discuss how we preserve the momentum going and arrange a help community for ladies who work within the golf trade. Watch this house!”
Sky Sports activities character Inci Mehmet was impressed by the initiative of Walton Heath Golf Membership gathering such a gifted group of girls from the golf trade. She stated: “I used to be honoured to share my story with the room, however even prouder wanting up understanding I used to be standing alongside different unbelievable feminine leaders and consultants of their subject”.
Nicole Wheatley who co-founded Medi8 and launched final 12 months’s Girls in Golf Awards shared: “Visibility has all the time been an essential constructing block within the mixed efforts to encourage extra ladies to embark on careers in golf. Being given the platform by Alex and the crew at Walton Heath is an actual honour. I hope that I’ve been in a position to encourage one or two extra individuals to embrace their variations as a result of golf must replicate extra various opinions as a way to meet the wants of the communities it serves.”
The Girls in Golf Summit is one in every of various initiatives Walton Heath Golf Membership is delivering forward of the AIG Girls’s Open. The membership has turn into the host membership for the AIG Girls’s Company Academy, and it has additionally instigated a proper invitation program to contain extra skilled feminine greenkeepers to assist ship the course throughout the AIG Girls’s Open together with The R&A and BIGGA.
