Wet wet wet

 Hi All,

I thought I’d do a little blog update to look at the effects of the recent weather has had on the course.

Since the 12th October we have experienced a rollercoaster of weather patterns, from heavy rainfall, weather warnings to some bursts of sunshine. We have registered over 130mm of rain and counting as I write this blog. All of this  following a wet summer with 252mm since July.

The amount of consistent rain has had a significant impact on the soils moisture levels and in turn the course. 

Bunkers needing time to drain down

The first week of this weather rollercoaster brought heavy rainfall to the South of England. This deluge resulted in saturated soils, making them destabilise the surfaces. To counter this we applied wetting agents to the surfaces to make the water penetrate further into the profile  and to help dry off the surfaces. 

You would have also noticed we then brought the winter traffic management out earlier than we ever have before by roping off all the aprons and wet areas around the course in an attempt to keep play going. 

 

Wet soils and high wind impacted the Oak on the 12th

 

The rain continued to fall at extremely high levels and consistently every day giving us no drying time, causing completely saturated soils and water logging with even the sand based courses in the area like Hayling and Corhampton flooding.

Now with the lower evaporation rates, high water table and less daylight hours. The daylight hours actually has a huge impact, more than people would realise by the end of November it be less the eight hours of daylight compared to the summers over 16 hours. The reduction of daylight has a big impact on evaporation and our ability to dry down quicker and became playable again. Even 24 hours without rain would make a huge difference but we are not even close to this or forecast it yet. 

The impact of this can make surfaces less safe and can cause significant damage at the start of winter. Damage that won’t recover and will only get worse if we don’t manage it. 

 

 

Trolley Ban

Bringing in a Trolley ban sometimes is our only way to reduce the impact and long term damage while trying to keep the course Open. We also have to look at the safety of you our members. 

I have received a lot of emails from members asking us to bring one in. Simply because our “Please make every effort to carry your bag” is just being ignored by those that don’t believe they need to help protect their course. 

When we say this, it’s our last attempt to let the players make that decision. For them to honestly look in the mirror and think… “do I really need a trolley, could I not use a pencil bag with half a set of clubs in it?” 

Doing this would dramatically reduce the damage on the course, it would be open more and those that really, really need a trolley due to ill health could still use it. 

Unfortunately this was not being applied and left us with the only option being to bring in a trolley ban as a last resort. 

I can promise you that as soon as the weather improves and the course starts to dry out this will be reversed. We do not want to impact people’s enjoyment, we just need to get through these waves of bad weather during the winter months to enable us to keep the course playable and safe. 

Course closures 

It’s inevitable with this much rainfall, high water table, lower evaporation and lack drying time that the course will become flooded, unstable and unplayable. We will have to make decisions to close the course on safety and damage grounds. This is always the last option but we have a long winter ahead and we need to keep the course in a good enough condition to withstand the rest of the winter. The cost of repairing the damage and lack of growth to aid this must also be taken into account. Again I can promise you this is something we really don’t want to do. We do have the option of the range now, where you can meet friends and play courses from all over the world including Stoneham on Trackman if you want to meet up, hit balls and play a game and have a drink on these really wet winter days. Speak to the Proshop and they help set this up. 

New seedlings coming up on Aprons

The Silver Lining - Growth Benefits:

It's not all bad news, though. The rain has also provided some benefits for the turf.

The moisture has stimulated some grass growth, resulting in some recovery in areas and aiding the new seedlings on the aprons. 

However, this growth can lead to the need for more mowing and maintenance which cannot be achieved during this amount of rainfall. Sometimes it’s better to leave it and turn our attentions other areas rather than causing damage as we go through this wet period. So apologies if some areas are a little longer than normal. Even getting machines out to maintain the course is very difficult in prolonged wet periods like this. 

Conclusion:

Our weather in the past two weeks has certainly had its ups and downs. While the heavy rain caused soil saturation and challenges for us and other sports including football, rugby, horse racing and golf.. 

The impacts of such weather remind us of the importance of good soil management and the resilience required to maintain turf.  

It has highlighted areas we need to improve drainage on. You may have noticed repairs on-going around the course on the likes of 18th and the 3rd, these drains had been hit during the irrigation installation as we thought along with more areas we are still looking at. The team have been using cameras to follow drains and find the points of impact from the mole ploughs. We have fixed or left areas open for us to monitor during this wet period. More on this in the next blog). 

 

Irrigation through the drainage on the 3rd (the trouble with no as laid plans of drainage)

 

As the weather continues to be unpredictable on this island of ours, golfers and greenkeepers we have to adapt and ensure the safety and best possible playing conditions for all.

Remember it’s not just us that are being impacted it’s a lot of sports. It’s simply just turf and too much water! 

See you soon and let’s hope for some dry days.

Matt 

No Pain, No Gain

 

Hi All,

 

Looking Back

Just writing to update you all on what’s been happening on the course and to look at some of the challenges we are tackling at the moment.

As the season comes to an end, we can look back with pride on how our members represented the club at all levels and in our own competitions.

This has been ‘another’ tough year from the course side of things but I think the team have done a fantastic job of dealing with everything that’s been thrown at us.

The season started off tremendously wet then it promised to be a good spring but that quickly transitioned into a hot May and June and a real worry about water and how much we would need kicked in. It still amazes me how quickly things can change.

In just a couple of weeks the evaporation increases dramatically as temperatures rise and day light hours increase.

Now as we head into Autumn these rolls reverse as the day light hours draw in, the temperatures drop, meaning moisture levels increase and the risk of turf diseases (and our own flus and colds) increase. This when the water tables start to rise. Some areas in Scotland have unbelievable amounts of rain since the 12^th September with this weekend hitting a new level of rainfall with Loch Lomond recording 100mm of rain in one day. That’s over a month’s worth of rain.

Washout after 35mm of rain 

Thankfully we haven’t had that and our wet summer from July seems good in comparison. We experienced 35mm in one night and due to this being in the summer and all of the above aiding our investments in the bunker drainage, the tarmacked pathways and the greens drainage we managed to get the course open and set up for a 9.30 shotgun, including cutting and rolling greens. A remarkable achievement on clay soils.

A team effort to restore the bunkers

Maintenance Works

In the last two days we have been hit with some very heavy rain. This has meant a change of plan for the planned hollow coring works. Every time we aerate we have to consider many factors, with rain being the main one in autumn, it’s welcomed in the summer following the works but not during the process as we had this week. We had planned to hollow core as I mentioned in our ‘Maintenance Plans’ that came out back in August. The plan was to hollow core tine on the 12^th and 13^th of October but following forecast and to try and reduce the amount of water getting into the profile we switched this process to a scarification. In a hope that we could still hit some of the targeted thatch without too much water penetrating the soils. We have carried out aeration works on these back in August so they have had some de-compaction and air but sometime we just have to make a change in the plan due to weather.  

Scarifying Aprons

It’s worth remembering we use contractors to help us with process at this time of year in attempt to be done quicker and with the correct machinery that we don’t own or currently have space to house. Originally we were due to hollow core Aprons, surround, tees and Fairways. A huge undertaking but due recent budget cuts we had to negotiate with the contractor to reduce the work down to just tees, aprons and surrounds.

Then with a week to go 25mm of rain appeared on the forecast. Hence why we made the change. Unfortunately this hit us during the night between the works and has left some of the aprons and tees wetter than we want as the water has penetrated the thatch layer but it is still better than it would have been with a hollow cored and will hopefully dry out with the wind and a couple of days without the rain.

Damage

The amount of thatch removed during the scarifying works was quite remarkable and great for our long term goal of firming up our main playing surfaces and I believe this is something that we have to do more of. There has been some areas of damage. Weak areas have ripped up and are being divoted to aid recovery. Please be patient with this. It’s a bit of no pain, no gain. These are the same areas that are keeping the aprons soft or not allowing us to tighten the cut to make them even better.   

The Pain :-(

The weak areas could be being caused by Chafer grub or Leather jacket damage or lack of root development due to Fairy ring and drought stress.  

Tournaments

The Tournaments have come and gone including Club Championships, England Golf, Pro Am, The Club Champs, The R&A Coronation Cup, Stoneham Trophy and Masters, Clutch Tour and many, many more. A special thanks to North Hants and Ogbourne downs golf clubs who sent greenkeeping volunteers in to help with the Clutch Tour.

Divot repair following Tournaments

Challenges

1.      Silver Moss- One of our challenges in the last few months has been Silver Moss. We have discussed this issue on the blog before. The Silver moss has encroached on to the drain lines, especially the 2^nd, 5th, 12^th, 17th, short game area. The Silver moss takes over on a thinning swards like our drain lines in the heat of summer or on pitch marks.

Silver Moss can be seen at the surface of the cores

This has been an issue we have been battling with for a couple of years on and off and have been talking this through with our Agronomist but we have carried out some trial work this year which we have had good results with and we have planned this into next summer’s strategy.

2.      Machinery- In 2016 we invested heavily into our machinery fleet as the equipment at the time was old and unsafe. The club have been investing into the machinery fleet ever since but as some of our core older machines are coming to the end of their life we are experiencing more and more break downs and machines not available to use. Some of these repairs are now taking months to repair due to part shortages with the knock on effect from Covid and Brexit.

The impact of machinery not working, breaking down or not working properly does impact the course we are capable of delivering. Even with a magic wand replacements are now taking between 12-18 months for delivery. The cost of borrowing money at the moment is also high with the market when looking at bigger deals. The price of the parts has doubled and buying second hand would only mean replacing them with machines in a similar situation to ours. The club are still investing in new and hire machinery to help but with purchases also increasing nearly 200% our speed of replacement has reduced because of costs.

Please be patient if you catch a member of staff or see a machine broken down on the course. There are reasons why things maybe taking a bit longer than normal.

 Conclusion

Looking back over the season I feel proud with how each and every one of the team have performed. We have welcomed two new faces with Matthew Strutt Donnelly and Freddy Banks fitting in perfectly.

Both Mark Blake and James Ferris have completed their Diploma in Sports Turf Management Level 3 and Harry Horn getting Distinction for both his written and practical exams for his Diploma in Sports Turf Level 2. Levi Pethick was awarded a place on FTMI (Future Turf Manager Initiative) from BIGGA. Open support, Tournament supporting, Course walks, Seminars, Webinars and lots of training within the team.

The clubhouse team with Shah at the helm and Ian in the Pro shop have all been fantastic to work with. The MC and Captains committee have been very busy looking at how to improve the business and the golf side with a focus on sustainability are something to be proud of.

Coming up drainage works and repairing damaged drain on the 3^rd and 18^th along with other areas will be on our agenda, the yearly battle with leaves will start and aiding recovery from the works talked about in the blog plus some renovations of bunkers and turfing weak areas are all on the horizon.

I do hope you found this blog interesting and you can see lots of work is being done.

Thank you for your patience with the latest scarifying works. Sometimes we have to break and egg to make an omelette! 

See you soon 

Matt