St Stephen’s Golf Society – club history

With members from around the East Kent area, St Stephen’s Golf Society was established in 2009 by St Stephen’s Social Club in Canterbury. Originally a Saturday Society, the tradition of playing in the last week of the month (pay day) continues.

New committee
In 2015 with dwindling numbers, a committee was formed from an active membership not necessarily members of the social club. The new committee quickly installed a chairman, secretary, fixtures secretary, treasurer and the first elected skipper Andy Stevenson. Membership increased over the coming months as new members invited their friends and colleagues.

Andy continued to run the society days in the same way as founder member Mark Delo (previous organiser) adding the Best Average and KO Cup competitions that are still active today. Fixtures also became more diverse with society days further afield including yearly golf holidays.

Diversity and Charity
From 2017 the society entered 4 ball teams into open competitions playing against other societies and charity golf day events raising up to £2,000 per year for local good causes. 2017 also saw the first of 3 lady members to play with the society that includes golfers from Ireland, South Africa and Bulgaria.

Major changes, improved finances
From 2015 the committee invited businesses to support the society and created an accounts and banking process for match day fees. Membership fees were  introduced to increase a working float of monies for golf course booking deposits and prizes.

Covid
With Covid19 causing so many ‘contact’ issues, treasurer Carl Bolton took the entire match day and membership payments over to the BACs transfer system. At the same time the society website was used as an information hub in parallel with a new WhatsApp group for all communication. WhatsApp groups are now in place for: General chat, event attendance (yes or no) and individual special events.

In 2020 the committee changed the match day to the last Friday of the month in the wake of Covid19 membership downturn. This turned out to be a good decision attracting more members to the society with lower costs and more courses available to play.

With a steady income stream, sponsorship and fixed match day fees, the fixtures secretary is able to book higher quality courses selected by the club captain.

With a diverse fixtures list and increasing membership, St Stephen’s Golf Society continues to go from strength to strength.

List of captains from 2015:

• Andy Stevenson (2015)
• Alex McBeth (2016)
• Steve Winder (2017)
• Karl Robson (2018)
• Mike Barham (2019)
• Nigel Stevenson (2020 – Covid)
• Nigel Stevenson (2021 – Covid)
• Paul Sequenza (2022)
• Bob McDougall (2023)
• Simon Fowler (2024)