Keeping Sentosa Green

General manager, golf superintendent and golf course designer, Sentosa Golf Club’s main man has now turned his efforts into a “Green” evolution for the nation’s premier golf club.

- Benny Teo

When Sentosa Golf Club launched the “Keep It Green” campaign in conjunction with the 2018 SMBC Singapore Open, it left a lot of people wondering just what it was. Initial impressions were tied to a partnership with then Asian Tour Merit Winner Gavin Green whose every birdie or green in regulation achieved, would earn a deserving junior golfer a complimentary round at the highly exclusive golf club.

Then, some others accrue it to an attempt at being environmentally conscious from the republic’s most reputable golf club.

Andy Johnson, general manager and director of agronomy at Sentosa Golf Club sums it up succintly.

He tells us, “It was launched a little over a year ago at the SMBC Singapore Open and meant to be a campaign that we drive the whole year that involved several things but it launched with telling the whole world that we were going to start doing things for the environment and trying to grow golf, with juniors.”

Johnson himself states, “How do you push awareness towards what we can do as a facility, as a beacon of stability for others to try to follow? I think attaching it with growing golf with juniors and Gavin Green in a big tournament like the SMBC helps give it a little bit more awareness.”

The idea for junior engagement is not just to promote the game but also to educate them from an early age, that golf is not bad for the environment.

“We are probably the best stewards of the land on the face of the earth if you look at agriculture, and really what agriculture does is to get crops ready,” said Johnston.

“We’re so careful in every little thing that we map out all the different plants and insects to try to find ways to improve environmental sensibility and make it as eco-friendly as possible.”

NO TO PLASTICS