Mike Bush, course manager at St. Mellion Estate, Cornwall, was named Dean of the Year at the first 59Club Global Service Excellence Award.
The experienced Cornishman defeated the golf course principal from 22 countries around the world to attend 10 nominees at the first global awards ceremony in front of 300 people at 59Club at the 59 Club at the new Masters Suite at the Belle Welfare Hotel and Resort near Birmingham, England.
Bush’s pride and joy is the world-renowned Nicklaus signature course in St. Mellion, one of Europe’s most breathtaking golf courses, and like all principal’s nominee Bush and his team, who went through a fierce data-driven evaluation period involving mysterious shopping and benchmark standards.
In the final review, they introduced the Nicklaus Signature Course, which is measured in the world’s best golf experiences in Denmark, Ireland, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Thailand.
Hometown boy
St. Melion achieved an amazing near-perfect result, and Bush accepted the award on behalf of his team. “St. Melion is in my blood,” he said. “I am a proud Cornwallman, who grew up in the village of St. Melion, so I have a deep personal connection with the estate here.
“I am proud to have received such a prestigious award and I am very grateful to 59club for this rare honor, but I think it is the same victory for my dedicated team and the glorious St. Mellion landscape we cultivated in this corner of Cornwall because it is a personal achievement.”
After his early career in golf course construction, Bush came to St. Melion in October 1995 and then prepared for the supervised courses for many professional events in the European Tour and the Advanced Tour. He obtained the status of Bigga Master Greenkeeper in 2011 and to this day, he is one of less than 100 people in the world.
St. Mellion is the flagship venue for Crown Golf Group, and Bush’s wife Regan also worked on the St. Mellion management team in 2014, expanding her role as a group course manager for the entire collection.
After St. Mellion joined 59Club in 2022, Bush won the UK and Ireland Awards of the Year in 2023 and 2024.
59Club sets industry performance benchmarks and celebrates excellence around the world, visiting more than 4,000 independent mystery shoppers each year, collecting customer experience data from every revenue source in the club environment and helping venues raise their own bar by deeply analyzing the results of hundreds of thousands of customer satisfaction surveys.
At the Bush Awards, 59Club founder and CEO Simon Wordsworth said: “Mike’s achievements proved his in St.
“It’s not a trivial thing to be recognized as the best global principal of the year: it reflects not only the surface of St. Mellion’s competition and the quality of Mike’s agronomic abilities, but also the ability of Mike to drive his team to be celebrating his team on a global platform, a true leader.
30 years of excellence
Jeff Chapman, founder of Crown Golf owner Bangarra Group, said: “The international golf world is like most global industries because there is fierce competition to be the best, but it does not always recognize the outstanding talent to make such a huge contribution to the success of the sport.
“So it’s good news that Mike Bush has received global recognition at this level. As the proud owner of the world-renowned St. Mellion Estate, Mike has been the one responsible for producing excellent competition conditions for nearly 30 years, and I congratulate everyone related to his measures and say “Thanks to him for his work, I’ve done a great job”.
“You need a world-class course manager to fully realize the potential of a world-class golf course, and Mike Bush is the guy at St. Mellion,” said David Moon. “He is a Michelin Michelin chef in our own golf industry and in Nicklaus he has his own signature dish.
“As a colleague Mike has consistently helped me lift my own game, his high quality standards have inspired all St. Mellion staff over the past 30 years. He has nurtured not only the world-famous golf course he created for Jack Nicklaus, whom he has also offered European Tours for our second season standards, which is our second course – a European Tour – European Tour.
“This grand global award is a good test of what he has achieved here. Mike not only sets his team for his team at this resort, but also sets a brilliant example for his peers in the global golf industry. His work is one of the main reasons why St. Melion is a very valuable place to visit.”
