Course Update - 16 April 2019

Greetings from the ‘Greenies’! What an amazing run of weather we are having, and we hope you are enjoying it as much as we are? To think that last year this time we had just been struck by one of the biggest storms in recent memory in which we had extensive damage to trees etc. on the golf course. The great weather of late has been very helpful to us during last weeks coring and this week’s weather should be wonderful too.

Coring:

Our coring of Greens, Tees and Green Surrounds went exactly according to plan along with seeding all the greens again as we have been doing every month for the whole summer. We are expecting all the surfaces to really enjoy what we have done and recover nicely in time for winter.

New Drainage on 13:

We are excited to have been able to reopen the 13th hole (Par 5) completely on Saturday 13 April only 6 weeks after the drainage works was completed and seeded. The grow in of this ‘new’ fairway has gone nicely but it will still take several months to fully mature, for the time being that part of the fairway will be mown slightly longer than the rest of the fairways to give it the best chance of maturing properly. Fortunately, we do have preferred lies on all fairways now, so this should be helpful for that fairway. You might notice a few wet patches to the left and right of the fairway way off in the rough under trees. This is because we were not able to install drainage under trees and during the grow in of the new fairway we had to frequently irrigate the seedlings to get them to grow properly. Some of the sprinkler do spray into the rough a little hence why it might be a little wet in the rough. We know that all our members are straight hitters, so you would be enjoying the new drainage and probably not notice this.

Bunkers:

The bunker renovation project is going very well, and Grant Puddicombe and his team have been doing a wonderful job. Some bunkers have needed extensive work to reshape the base of some of the bunkers and we are excited to see and play on the end result. We have sprayed all the renovated bunkers with the Better Billy Bunker polymer glue except for the fairway bunker on 1 and right of the green on 16. We should start to install the sand later this week and next week (short weeks due to the upcoming Stat. days) and we will do all we can to have them back in play as soon as possible. You will notice that many of the bunkers have changed in size and shape and a total of 4 bunkers have been eliminated which is great news for especially me! The course maintenance team is also thrilled about the work as all of this will save us many hours of frustration and we will be able to present the bunkers in consistently better condition. On a side note we do ask that players do not play from some of the newly seeded (now G.U.R.) around and near some of the bunkers please.

WASPS!

Due to having beautiful summer weather the population of Wasps has exploded all around the country and even here on our course. The Wasps in the tree near the bridge between Hole 7 and 8 have been particularly stubborn. We have removed 3 big nests, we have poisoned them and sprayed them, but they keep returning. A professional bee keeper has been helping us with this problem now for a couple of months with limited success, but we do ask for your patience. This lot is not as easy to remove as we would have liked.

Kind Regards

Spencer and the ‘Greenies’