Hi All,
To say I am at my desk a little perplexed writing this blog
would be an understatement. I think we
all felt a Lockdown was inevitable following the Christmas period but I was
convinced golf would still be allowed. I felt the governing bodies had put a
strong case about the health benefits of golf to the government. Golf in
Scotland has continued and even after the 2nd phase when things got
stricter for many, golf has continued north of the border. Unfortunately in
England and Wales this wasn’t supported, even though we know it’s one of the
safest sports you can play during these testing times but looking at the
numbers right now, I think we all can see how serious this is and if we need to
stay at home let’s do it January into February when the weather is cold and
awful so we can let the vaccines catch up and enjoy the spring and summer and hopefully
get back to some kind of normal again.
2020 was a difficult and challenging year but I was immensely
proud of the way the team at the club handled the situation and adapting to
keep members and each other safe. Golf boomed in 2020 as people looked for a
safe sanctuary. We are now full as a golf club with a large waiting list. I
think this will only increase when the range opens and we have the complete
member experience. The club are investing in the members and for the members.
The future of the club will be stronger than ever once this all fades from
memory but for now we are very close to things being what we would have said
was “normal” but now I will say “great” again.
Unfortunately the weather following the second lockdown made
things hard for us as the course was just full. The water table was high and
the rainfall very high following a dry May and June. Luckily over Christmas the
frosts kicked in and allowed the course some drying time. Please remember we
only close the course if we have too. We never want to do this but with all the
golf trying to be played because of the situation we have to protect the course
and your safety sometimes. Hopefully things will improve weather wise, as the
days get longer now this helps the drying of the grass plant. We will have wet
periods but as we edge closer to spring these tend to get recover better as
time goes on.
If we look at the rainfall charts from 2018, 2019 and 2020 we can see that 2020 had another wet last quarter to the year. We had 440mm from October to December beating the previous year of 396mm and 252mm in 2018. Our average for this quarter is 265mm. Not only the quarter but the year. 2020 was our wettest year since I have been collecting data here since 2015. Not bad considering we thought it was going to be our driest at one point.
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| Leaf clearing has continued |
Onto 2021, a very strange start to the year with six frost
days already and another lockdown. The team have now got used to bringing all
the course equipment in (Makers, Flags, Bins, Yardage posts and ropes etc). It’s
something that I hadn’t done in my previous 25 years in the industry and I am
hoping this is the last time I need to do it.
So what have the team been up to in 2021 so far?
Well, apart from removing all the course furniture (which
takes longer than you think), we made a start by hitting areas of leaves again.
Areas that we thought were pretty clean before we started end up with huge
piles to be collected. Ditches were cleared through again to aid water leaving
the course.
Divoting Fairways 
Divoting tees
The course has been getting a full divot. Tees, Aprons, Fairways
and Surrounds have all been worked on. We have a couple more to pick up in the
coming week or so but our aim is to get as much seed in these divots ready for
the warmer weather.
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| Turfing on 18th hole following damage |
Lots of turfing has also taken place this week. The top right of the 18th, the area around the 10th tee and 10th green that was damaged due to the comfort station and wetland area projects. Tidying ends of pathways, bridges and bunker banks damaged from the summer drought which seems so long ago, especially with it being so wet now. We have returfed bunkers on the 1st, 4th, 7th, 12th.
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| 10th Pathway being turfed areas left for heather turfing |
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| Bunker edges returfed |
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| Damaged area right of 10th/18th before |
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| Damaged area after |
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| 4th Bridge area before |
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| 4th Bridge after |
Our plan is to do more on the 18th around the pit but at the moment the area is to wet and we will need to revisit the drainage. When this dries out enough we will start to fix this issue and then re-turf that area. The rest of that area to the right and hugging along the tree line has been seeded as this area is out of play and will recover quickly.
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| Area at the bottom by the pit on 18th holding water and requires drainage |
We have also managed to spray greens with some iron and
wetting agents to protect them from disease. We are still dewing greens daily
to help reduce the moisture content on greens which in turn helps reduce
disease attacks. We haven’t had to do any cutting so far this year due to the
amount of frosts and little growth, we are trying to keep this to a minimum when
wet to reduce damage with the bonus being over 1000m2 of turfing being done
this week.
The frosty weather gave us an opportunity to run the top-soil finally into the18th fairway bunker. Small loads were run in with our Gators and then spread and firmed in ready for the heather to be turfed on it. This was a slow version but at least it will allow us to get this finished.
Graham and Harry looking at Leather jackets. Note how damaged turf is compared to fairway
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| Leather Jacket eating root of grass plant on the 4th |
Another thing we have been looking at is Leather Jacket
damage and seeing what our populations are like. As I ve said before the
chemistry we used to have to reduce this pest has now been revoked and the
damage from crows digging for these Leather jackets (Cranefly) and the damage
the grub actually does by eating 60% of all roots on a grass plant can be quite
alarming. We are looking at different ways to reduce the impact from these
through more cultural means but I will blog more about these soon once I have
more information.
That’s enough from me this week.
Stay safe everyone, we can’t wait to have you back.
Matt
