Women's Club Championship: How To Get More Entries

36 holes or 18? One day or two? Weekday or weekend? If your Club Championship field is shrinking, it may be time to ask whether tradition is helping the event or holding it back.

Getting women to enter the Club Championship is a familiar problem for many women’s sections. What should be one of the highlights of the golfing year can end up attracting a small field, often dominated by the same lower-handicap players, and inevitably the discussion turns to the format.

Is 36 holes simply too much? Would more women play at a weekend? Should there be an 18-hole option? And if you start changing a competition that may have been played in broadly the same way for decades, at what point do you diminish the Championship itself?

There isn’t one format that will work at every club, but it helps to separate the purpose of the Championship from the way the event is organised. The Championship exists to identify the club’s best player; the event around it needs to persuade enough women that it’s worth entering. Changing the latter doesn’t necessarily compromise the former.

Is 36 holes still the right test?

There is a strong case for 36 holes. Two rounds reduce the chance of one exceptional or disastrous 18 holes deciding the title and give the leading players a more substantial test.

The difficulty is what that demands of everyone else in the field. Thirty-six holes in one day requires time, stamina and, for many women, some organisation around work, children or caring responsibilities. Splitting the rounds across two days reduces the physical demands but creates a different problem if competitors now have to make themselves available twice.

An 18-hole Championship lowers the barrier considerably, although some clubs will understandably feel that one round isn’t enough to determine their champion. There is no single right answer. What matters is whether the format is working for the membership the club has today.

If women are happy to play 36 holes but can’t make the traditional weekday date, shortening the competition won’t increase entries. Equally, moving 36 holes to a Saturday won’t help members who simply don’t want to play two competitive rounds in a day.

Before changing the format, clubs need to know which problem they are actually trying to solve.

Ask the women who aren’t playing

This is probably the most useful place to start.

Committees can spend a great deal of time discussing what might encourage more entries when the answer may be sitting in the membership list. Ask the women who normally play competitions but don’t enter the Championship why they stay away.

Would they enter if it were 18 holes? Could they play 36 holes over two days? Is a weekday impossible because of work? Would they play at a weekend? Or do they simply see the Championship as an event for the section’s lowest-handicap golfers?

A short member survey or a few conversations can tell you far more than another committee debate about what women ought to want.

The answer may also be different from club to club. A section with a predominantly retired membership may find its traditional weekday date works perfectly well. Another trying to retain and attract working women may discover that the same arrangement excludes a significant part of its membership before the number of holes has even become relevant.

Give the wider field something to play for

A golfer with little realistic prospect of winning the scratch trophy may still enjoy taking part, but there needs to be a reason to give up the time.

This is where additional competitions can help. The scratch title remains the main event, while handicap prizes, divisions or a shorter accompanying competition can give the wider field something meaningful to play for.

That doesn’t mean creating so many prizes that the Championship loses its identity. A handicap prize running alongside the main competition may be enough. Depending on the size and make-up of the section, a club might instead use divisions or offer an 18-hole competition alongside a 36-hole Championship.

The important distinction is that none of these changes needs to alter how the Club Champion is decided. The main trophy still goes to the player who wins the scratch competition; the event simply gives more of the women taking part something to compete for.

Does the date still work?

The traditional weekday Championship remains perfectly workable at clubs where the women’s section can support it. But memberships change, and a date that suited the section 20 years ago may not suit the women the club is trying to retain today.

Working women are the obvious consideration. A Championship played on a weekday may require annual leave before the question of 18 or 36 holes even arises. Moving to a weekend can solve that problem, although it may bring competition for tee times, clashes with other club events and different family commitments.

Rather than asking the whole membership whether it prefers weekdays or weekends, look particularly at the women who are missing from the Championship field. If regular competition golfers repeatedly don’t enter because of the date, that is useful information.

The same principle applies to the number of holes. Participation decisions are often discussed in general terms when the club really needs to understand the barriers affecting its own members.

Make it feel like a Club Championship

Format and scheduling aren’t the whole story.

If Championship Day feels exactly like another monthly medal, apart from the trophy waiting at the end, it is harder to create the sense that this is one of the important events in the club calendar.

It doesn’t require an elaborate production. A proper draw, a starter on the first tee, visible scoring, photographs and a presentation while competitors are still at the club can all help distinguish the Championship from an ordinary competition.

Clubs should also look at how prominently they celebrate their champions. If the men’s Club Championship is treated as one of the biggest occasions of the year while the women’s event receives much less attention, changing from 36 holes to 18 isn’t going to solve the whole problem.

Making more of the occasion matters to the wider field as well as the players capable of winning. Women will enter events because they enjoy being part of them, even when they know their name is unlikely to end up on the trophy.

Protect the Championship, not necessarily the format

Tradition is part of club golf, and winning a Club Championship should carry weight. But the prestige comes from the competition, the scratch title and the way the club recognises its champion, rather than automatically from playing a particular number of holes on a particular day of the week.

Where entries remain healthy and members value the existing format, there is little reason to change it. Where the field has been shrinking year after year, preserving exactly the same format becomes harder to defend.

The starting point isn’t another discussion about whether 18 holes is enough or whether 36 should remain sacrosanct. It’s finding out why women who already belong to the club and already play golf aren’t putting their names down.

Once you know that, the decisions about holes, dates and additional competitions become much easier to make. The aim isn’t to make the Club Championship easier to win. It’s to make it an event more women want to play in.