July 15, 2021 - Turf Matters

RainBird promotion for Alastair Higgs: Alastair Higgs has been promoted to the role of Europe Service Manager. In this new position, working from Rain Bird Europe’s office in France, Alastair’s responsibilities will include developing and driving forward service activities for Rain Bird across Europe.

Beginning his career as a greenkeeper at Calcot Park in 2000, Alastair joined American Golf UK in 2004, before becoming Head Greenkeeper at Donnington Valley Golf Club, and then Course Manager at Windlesham Golf Club. Joining Rain Bird in 2016 as a Golf Sales Specialist, he became Golf District Manager for the UK, Ireland and Iceland in 2018, managing and promoting the distribution of Rain Bird Golf products and services through trusted partners, providing support and guidance about best practice to end users.

RainBird promotion for Alastair Higgs

Alastair comments:

“My new role widens my remit significantly and covers the full spectrum of Rain Bird products over a much larger geographical territory. Having been involved with golf throughout my career to date, it’s a welcome change to be dealing with a range of new sectors from agriculture to residential. It also allows me to manage and guide our team of talented service engineers and support the network of approved service providers to deliver after sale Global Service Plans, installation start-up, training, software and on-site services.

As our focus is increasingly software-centric, remote and on-site support is becoming much more important, not only for new installations but also throughout the lifetime of Rain Bird systems. An enhanced service offering puts customers in full control and gives them complete peace of mind, enabling them to maximise efficiency of central control and cloud-based technologies and gain all the benefits that these offer.”

“I am delighted to announce Alastair’s promotion” says Richard Nelson, Global Sales and Service Manager. “Alastair has in-depth knowledge of our irrigation technologies and with his vision and drive, will take us forward in this exciting new period for the Rain Bird European service team.”

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Polaris support Sporting & Sportrap Championships: Polaris Off Road Vehicles continues its partnership with the prestigious UK shooting ground, E.J. Churchills, by supporting the 2021 CPSA World English Sporting and Sportrap Championships that took place last week.

Running from Monday 5th July to Sunday 11th July, this was the sixth time that E.J. Churchill had hosted the World Championships, which attracts competitors from all over the world. Polaris UK supported E.J. Churchill by supplying a number of vehicles to help with event logistics, including the Ranger XP 1000 Crew, General 4-seater model, Ranger 1000, Ranger Diesel and the electric Ranger EV, in addition to the existing fleet in operation across the grounds.

Polaris support Sporting & Sportrap Championships

Known as the most prestigious clay pigeon shooting ground in England, and the largest, spanning over 35-acres, the award-winning E.J. Churchills Shooting Ground is built upon a century of heritage and excellence. The grounds are located just outside of London on the wider West Wycombe Estate; a 5,000-acre estate that is home to the Dashwood family and has been since 1698. With the grand English estate of West Wycombe as a backdrop for the event, competitors enjoyed the traditional British experience surrounded by the beautiful English countryside.

Polaris off-road vehicles have been in operation across the estate for over ten years, with a number of Polaris Ranger models being used for ground management, maintenance and VIP guest logistics. For E.J. Churchill, it comes down to reliability, and for the World Championships specifically, E.J. Churchill needed to ensure their vehicles did not let them down across such an important event.

Rob Fenwick, Managing Director of E.J. Churchill Shooting Ground, said: “The World Championships are always a huge deal for us at E.J. Churchills, and it’s really important that we have complete confidence in our kit to ensure everything runs smoothly – it’s vital to a successful event. In our opinion, the Polaris vehicles do just about every job with complete ease; it’s a seriously hard-working tool that’s never let us down since we started using them ten years ago.”

The 2021 CPSA World English Sporting and Sportrap Championships alternate between the Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) in England and the National Sporting Clays Association (NCSA) in the USA each year. The World English Sporting Championships consisted of 200 targets, shot over two days. There was a 25-target Super Final, where the top six shooters competed for the title. The World Sportrap Championships is a 100-target competition shot across the course of the week. In addition to the two world championships, a preliminary English Sporting course and a FITASC Sporting course also took place during the event.

Watch the ninth episode of RANGER Stories to see how E.J. Churchills Shooting Ground uses their Polaris Ranger vehicles on the Polaris Off-Road International YouTube channel here.

For more information on E.J. Churchills and the World Championships, please visit https://www.ejchurchill.com/