Life will go full circle in a family friendly way for Astbury Golf Club's new head professional Daniel Bills the week after next – Open Championship week – when his father Phil starts working for him.

It was 13 years ago that the then 16-year-old Daniel started his first job in golf, going part time for his dad in the shop at the Heyrose club in Knutsford, where Phil was the professional.

Daniel has been at Astbury for two weeks and he can't wait for Phil to make the move from his current club, Dunham Forest in Altrincham.

Daniel said: "We need to get the pro staff up to strength quickly at Astbury but he took a lot of persuading to come and join me because he is enjoying it at Dunham Forest.

"It was hard to get him to step across but I have managed to convince him to come and help me out."

Clearly looking forward to Phil's arrival, Daniel added: "When I started working for him as a teenager I quickly decided golf was the career I wanted to be in.

"Dad would not have minded whatever I did but I was enjoying it so much it was an obvious career choice for me.

"A lot of the way I coach comes from the way he always keeps everything really clear and totally simple.

"He never over complicates anything and I learned a lot from him. He is very clear and concise."

Daniel arrived at Astbury after two and a half years at Royal Aberdeen, a club high enough up the R&A and European Tour pecking orders to have staged the Walker Cup, the Scottish Open and the Amateur Championship within the past 10 years.

As well as being a PGA pro there, he was also the caddy master overseeing more than 50 caddies catering for the needs of visiting golfers, many of them from America.

At 29, he has packed in enough experience to appreciate the ethos of his new club.

"I was happy at Royal Aberdeen," he said, and I was not looking for anything until I found out the position at Astbury was open.

"Astbury is well known in the golf industry as a good place to work and it is in my home county.

"So I did my research, asked around and discovered it was indeed a really good job to apply for.

"It is a busy and friendly club with 680 playing members and around 60 or so social members, which is a lot.

"There is also a strong ladies section which was something I found to be the case when I worked at the West Lancs club in Liverpool.

"Astbury's genuine desire to strike a balance is reflected in the way the golf boom which followed the pandemic forced them into having a waiting list for the first time in ten years.

"They decided that although there currently has to be a block on new male adult members, membership remains open to females and juniors.

"This attitude is an important driving force for a golf club and makes Astbury a more rounded place to be and contradicts the stereotype of male dominated golf club.

"Also there is a lot of investment in the clubhouse, the course and the practice ground. Astbury is a club on the way up and an exciting place to work."

Away from his job, Daniel enjoys going to watch live sport and live music in general and in particular Everton Football Club and Foo Fighters.

His all-time favourite footballer, Leighton Baines, is the Professional Development Coach for the Everton Academy.

In the golf world, Daniel has built on the hands-on grounding gleaned at his father's knee, initially by qualifying at the age of 23 as a golf professional with a PGA Foundation Degree at The University of Birmingham.

Daniel was born on the Wirral and brought up in Middlewich, where his parents live and where he was a pupil at St Nicholas High School.

He has also worked at the Bourn club, before it became Cambridge Golf & Country Club, and Dunham Forest.

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READERS can see from the picture of Daniel Bills near Astbury's first tee that one of many ideas generated by the club's Centenary Committee has already bloomed.

The dry-stone planter bearing the inscription 1922-2022, which has been built around a circle of flowers, is the result of an idea from one of the club's former lady captains, Rosemarie Proudlove.

The planter and a first tee wall were built by Heritage Walling, whose joint owners are Andrew Rogers, an Astbury member and his business partner David Hollins.

Their customers include The Peak District National Park Authority and The National Trust.

The greatly enhanced visual impact around the first tee caught the eye of the Cheshire Union chairman Andrew Henshall, when he played the course in a county Life Members Meeting this season.

As well as praising the greens, Andrew said: "I have been playing in events at Astbury for around a quarter of a century and I have never seen the course in such a good condition.

"I was particularly impressed by the work around the first tee and the way the new sand stone dry wall blended in so well with the surroundings and the stream at the third looked even more attractive than I remember it.

"The Cheshire Union are looking forward to playing the Cheshire Matchplay Championships at Astbury next year during the club's centenary and I am sure the elite players in the county will enjoy playing such a fine course."

The picture was taken by Dominic McAllister, who handles Press and PR for the golf club.

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ONE of my family briefly worked for a golf club a few years ago and at the end of her first day, I asked how she had got on.

The first thing I heard? "You should see the size of their energy bills – I could not believe my eyes!"

Understandably those of us who love biffing a little white ball around green fields have no reason to consider such matters.

This is our leisure time, we are their customers and, hey, we've got our own bills to provide for.

Members of the Congleton club, however, may be interested to know one of the ways the club keeps the price of subs as low as possible is by using the Golf Management Group.

GMG are partners with England Golf, Wales Golf and Scottish Golf.

This gives every golf club on the UK mainland affiliated to their national association complimentary access to their service.

GMG have this week wrapped up Congleton's most recent energy contracts, having already saved the club over £5,000 on their gas and electric bills since 2018.

I asked James Heald, a GMG consultant, to estimate how much time this has saved David Lancake, the club secretary of 18 years' standing.

James said: "We work with around 18 suppliers for gas and electricity, so let's say each call David would have to make to ring the suppliers would be 30 minutes each.

"Then to play them off against each other to get a cheaper rate, and then to manage transfers of supplies to new suppliers if needed? You could easily say 24 hours' work."

David said: "The financial saving is one way the club benefits and also these are three working days I have available to spend on other matters."

GMG have helped over 700 golf clubs in this way since it was formed in 2010, saving them more than £3m.

In recent years, expansion into other sports has brought partnerships with the Lawn Tennis Association and the Welsh Rugby Union.

Savings achieved for tennis and rugby clubs amount to a more than £750,000.

GMG's founding director, Scott Partington, said: "We harness the collective spend of the golf clubs, the tennis clubs and the rugby clubs.

"When it comes to negotiating, that strengthens our position and gives us greater leverage.

"We negotiate exclusive terms which cannot be accessed anywhere else on the back of the potential spend of our membership across three sports.

"We make ita simple process for the clubs because we do all the legwork. The clubs benefit in two ways, financially and in time and resource and, of course, time is money.

"GMG are always up to date with new requirements and trends such as electric vehicle charging and solar installations.

"Although playing sport does nothing but good in terms of public health, environmental sustainability and climate change remain huge issues for us all and will remain so for the rest of our lifetimes.

"We are constantly evolving as a company. We have to, because the world around us is constantly changing."

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FOR more information on the golf clubs this column covers every Saturday morning, visit Astbury and Congleton's websites.

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Tim Taylor of timmyteepr is a former national newspaper staff sports reporter and sub-editor who is now chief writer for the online golf magazine Exclusive Golf & Travel.

He is a member of the Association of Golf Writers, the Football Writers Association and the Cricket Writers Club.