Most people have an interesting back-story to share about their life story, but for Simon Wordsworth, CEO of 59club, his tale is perhaps more pertinent now, more than ever.

Fresh out of school, Wordsworth was contemplating a career in either accountancy or estate management before he was asked to help at Hickleton Golf Club, where he was junior captain at the time.

The club had recently appointed Paul Shepherd as the club’s new professional, and Shepherd who was in the process of relocating his young family to South Yorkshire from Lancashire, asked Wordsworth to help out in the pro shop over the summer.

“I was asked to help before I went to university, and there my story starts,” recollects Wordsworth. “I chose selling Mars Bars and babysitting Paul’s children over university, and much of what and who I am now came from Paul’s help and support over those formative three years.”

And in a twist to his tale, Paul’s son David – who Wordsworth babysat for all those years ago – is now CEO of The Scandinavian in Denmark, and a 59club client to boot.

Wordsworth also spent time working with Mark Pearson at Bondhay Golf Club and as Wordsworth admits, both have helped shape his career. “Both were two very influential and creative people in my development, and one of the reasons why I have always tried to work closely with every golf professional who has worked for me.

“I’ve always tried to match the support that both Paul and Mark gave to that ‘gobby little Yorkshire boy’,” laughs Wordsworth.

In April 1992, Wordsworth joined The Belfry and there followed a 14-year career which was cut horribly short on July 4, 2005.

Life that day changed forever, both in a personal and professional capacity as Wordsworth explained: “Everyone comes across one, or several crossroads in their life, well I didn’t come across mine, it hit me head on.

“Aged 36 years old I had a fit,” said Wordsworth. “Over a 24-hour period something which started as a little bit of a cold, progressed to being ‘away with the fairies’ and ended up with me throwing myself off the settee and having a full blown fit in front of my wife and kids.

“Flashing lights, paramedics, intensive care and a five-and-a-half-day induced coma followed, [all] of which made me totally reassess my life and priorities.

“I simply lay in intensive care, watched what was going on around me and vowed that if I made it through, I would get out of the corporate world and take control.

“My 14 years at The Belfry were wonderful, but very simply the never-ending chasing of higher share returns and ever more increase in budgets took its toll on me. I did not have enough sense to see what it was doing to me, and just ploughed on regardless, a decision which nearly cost me my life.”

Thankfully, Wordsworth made a full recovery, and is today, fit-and-well. But the terrible ordeal that he and his family had to endure 15 years ago, does have a silver lining.

The first stage of reforming Wordsworth’s life was the formation of The Aspiration Group, which in-turn, led to the creation in 2008 of 59club, a specialist golf and leisure benchmarking business currently working in EMEA, Asia and the United States.

Working closely with golf club managers, 59club provides customer satisfaction surveys, mystery shopper audits and industry insight to clubs irrespective of size or stature, and since COVID, has accelerated the range of online surveys and metric tools that clubs are able to access.

“We stopped sending our mystery testers into clubs very quickly in the real early stages in March, after which you would think we would have little to do, [but] that has not been the case,” explained Wordsworth.

“We decided to take the position of supporting our clients through this by working with them and allowing access to as many of our services as possible for free. It seemed like a choice we made, but honestly, I am not sure we had a choice.

“Our business is all about supporting managers and owners and it felt right to continue with that journey. Hopefully, their loyalty will be our greatest reward and may also lead to them referring us to others.

“It will be difficult for many people over the next 12 months, [and] golf has a wonderful opportunity but… the club atmosphere and ‘feel’ may have to change and the management of that will not be easy. Managers with their finger on the pulse will handle this better. Embrace feedback, listen, and adapt.

“We have just released two products that have been in development for almost two years,” he adds. “The first is ‘my59 metrics’ which adds financial benchmarking to our portfolio along with the ‘emotional and operational’ benchmarking that we have done for 12 years.

“The second is a training platform called ‘my59 mentor’ where we have hosted all 12 years of learning to enable managers to train, upskill and even induct staff throughout the operation. These new offerings added to what we already do – one dashboard will arm every one of our managers with the tools to improve their customer journeys.

“We know that many operations are run very tightly, and we feel that business metrics will arm the club with solid financial data to enable decisions based on fact, rather than gut feel. Good management is minimising the risk or at the very least totally understanding the cost versus [the] benefit of your actions.”

Most commentators suggest that the golf industry – like many other sectors – will face tough times in the months and years ahead. When asked last year how many clubs could close across the UK and Europe, Wordsworth suggested that as many as one in four could shut. However, he now holds a different view.

“My gut feeling now is that in the short-term [that number will be] much less, but unless golf takes advantage now, by the time the recession is at its deepest we will come back to that number.

“I do think that there is a serious opportunity, however I also thought we had a huge opportunity before, and golf wasn’t taking it then.

“There will be short term wins where membership holes are filled because we have been denied golf, but there is a significant recession around the corner and managers have a short window to get golf back to being a necessary spend and not a luxury one. Health, family and community are its key opportunities.

“I think that the higher end private clubs will have a choice to go more private, and the middle ground will be really interesting in my view. Those higher end clubs have a great opportunity to create ‘safe havens’ where people feel comfortable and secure.

“There will be short term wins as venues open at varying speeds and there will be a chunk of nomadic golfers who I feel will temporarily return to the member fold for one, maybe two years before the ‘value’ questions rears its ugly head again.

“In summary in the long-term I think golf will continue to polarize with each area having its few ultra-private clubs, a number of very family friendly clubs, a few pay and play clubs and anyone who is not in those areas will struggle. You can’t be everything to everybody – it’s the club identity that the manager should deliver. If you try, you will fail in the long run.”