IMG Prestige Q&A with Gavin Eckford

IMG PRESTIGE Q&A WITH GAVIN ECKFORD

JINJI LAKE GOLF CLUB

IMG Prestige Q&A with Gavin Eckford, General Manager at Jinji Lake Golf Club, China

1 – Jinji Lake Golf Club was recognised for the second time as “Best Golf Course in China” by the World Golf Awards. How do you and the team manage to keep such high standards?

A lot of the management team has been here for 10 years or more, and some since it opened in 2006 so we have always been consistent from that respect. The IMG Agronomy team has very high standards and the golf course has been really well maintained over the years so course conditions are a definite strong point for us as well. We do our best to give our members a great experience, but we are still constantly looking for ways to improve.

2 – The club celebrated its 15th anniversary this year. In your opinion what have been the main achievements since we opened, and also what are the plans for the future?

The members really enjoy it when we host professional tournaments. In the past we have hosted the European Tour Volvo China Open as well as two PGA TOUR China events and I always have members asking what is the next big event on the horizon. Unfortunately, due to travel restrictions, we haven’t been able to host any over the past couple of years, but we would certainly like to again in the future.

3 – Membership sales have been very successful at Jinji Lake. Apart from the stunning golf course, what other benefits do members receive?

We have become much more adventurous with regards to our member events in recent years, focusing a lot of time, energy, and resources into that part of the club. There is no doubt we have made really big strides in elevating the quality of our golf events, but we have also started to offer many more non-golf events as well which have been really successful. We held several family parties this year as well as a photography competition, a green tea event, Oktoberfest, and many more. Our events team has a long list of ideas that we look forward to trying out in the future as well.

We are also exploring the possibility of adding some non-golf amenities to the club to give our members even more benefits over the coming years. We are still working on the details, but the possibilities are very exciting.