Avanti Golf, a European supplier of ultrasonic golf club cleaning machines, announced that its fully automated, computer-controlled Club-Cleaner 5000 is now a free feature at the K Club in County Kildare, Ireland, home of the 2006 Ryder Cup.
Golf clubs provide almost every facility their members need, except one - an easy way to thoroughly clean golf clubs after the round. Now The K Club has taken the lead in what will become a trend across Europe by offering their members free ultrasonic golf club cleaning. After every round a member plays at the K Club, their clubs are taken from them and the heads and grips are ultrasonically deep-cleaned before being returned.
The K Club invested in the Club-Cleaner 5000, an ultrasonic golf club cleaning machine specially designed for the purpose by Avanti Golf, based in Dublin, Ireland, which thoroughly cleans a full set of clubs in 3 minutes. Ultrasonic cleaning uses high-frequency sound waves to quickly and efficiently remove dirt from club heads (including deep in the grooves) as well as sweat, oils & other grime from the grips.
"The benefits to golfers are huge," says Franco De Bonis, managing director of Avanti Golf. "Clean grooves on club heads deliver a better contact surface for cleaner strikes and more control of spin, while cleaning grips restores the original tackiness to the grip and also removes the grime that harbors millions of potentially harmful bacteria."
The K Club chose the Club-Cleaner 5000 unit, supplied by the aptly named "Ultrasonic Golf," Avanti Golf's regional partner for Eastern & Northern Ireland because it is Europe's only fully automated ultrasonic golf club cleaning machine. Although there are other ultrasonic cleaning machine providers, the K Club wanted a machine with maximum efficiency and minimum maintenance.
The Club-Cleaner 5000 has the ability to completely manage its day-to-day operation. Including filling and maintaining water level and temperature, adding specialist cleaning solution as needed and even refreshing the water every thirty cleaning cycles to ensure that clubs are always cleaned in fresh water. This means almost zero workload for golf club staff versus any other ultrasonic club cleaning unit, which typically require daily filling, emptying and storage.
"To have the K Club implement our equipment and especially to be the first permanent installation in Europe is wonderful," De Bonis says. "This is the only machine of its kind in the world and it confirms the quality and effectiveness of our technology and backs up our belief in this new and exciting sector. In a few years we believe our machines will be as common place as the compressed air hoses are today. Yet it wasn't that long ago when golfers had to rub their feet on brushes at the end of a round and it was clubs like the K Club that took the lead in adding what was then an extremely expensive new feature like compressed air cleaning bays."
Bill Donald, director of golf at the K Club, is delighted with their new service.
"The K Club has always believed in driving golf forward and ensuring that we are at the forefront of embracing innovations that benefit our members and customers,” he says. When we saw how effectively ultrasonic cleaning worked we knew that our members would be delighted and so we decided to implement it."
