AN UPDATE FROM...

Sarah Blunden General Manager

Hi everyone, Wow! What a difference a few months makes. After a horribly long and wet winter, Spring finally showed itself in mid-

I want to start this newsletter with a huge thank you and well done to the greenkeeping team. The golf courses are looking stunning! I always love getting out there in the late Spring when the grass is at its greenest, the trees are in full leaf, and the course is fully striped back up.

As always, there’s still plenty for us to work on in order to continually provide you with the best courses possible. Over the next few months, we will be overseeding the tees, greens, and approaches, micro-tining the greens on the Shey and Par-3 course, applying wetting agents, and ensuring the irrigation is running as efficiently as possible ready for summer. Our main summer maintenance is booked for Wednesday 12th July, when we will be scarifying and immediately back filling the greens with sand. This will allow us to get them back in play straight away. This process physically removes thatch from the greens which helps to improve the overall health and drainage of the greens. As with any form of aggressive greens maintenance, there will be a recovery period following the work. However, it is essential that we manage the health of the greens and keep moving forward with improving playability on the courses.

We have an exciting few months ahead of us, with the Club Championships, Invitation Days, and your Charity Golf Day all coming up. Good luck to everyone taking part during June and July.

Looking back to the start of May, we had brilliant fun at our Coronation Event. Over 80 members took part in a fun competition across either the Main or Shey Course. This was followed by a BBQ, games, and a singalong in the clubhouse.

I had so much fun taking part in the events that day, and especially loved everyone joining in and singing together in the afternoon. A special thanks must go to the super talented, Gionny. Our F&B Supervisor, Gionny can normally be found serving you on the bar. However, on this occasion he was belting out the tunes to ‘Oh Mandy’ by Barry Manilow, ‘My Way’ by Dean Martin, and ‘That’s Amore’ also by Dean Martin. He did a magnificent job, and I hear he is already booked in for further events later this year.

Back at the end of April, we held our New Members Golf Day. It was lovely to be able to meet some of our new members in person and also introduce them to the committee. A fun round on the Shey Course was followed by drinks and nibbles back in the clubhouse. It was a great opportunity for me to get to know some new faces, for our new members to meet others, and also to allow any questions regarding the club to be answered. For those of you who have recently joined, we will be hosting another new members golf day later this summer.

We are very lucky at Hoebridge, to have such a great team of people working for us. This has been further shown with two recent internal promotions; Gavin to Head Chef and Mark to Assistant H&F Manager. Congratulations guys! We have also welcomed our new Driving Range Manager, Sam, who will be overseeing the day-to-day running of our TrackMan Range. You can find out more about Gavin, Mark, and Sam further down the newsletter.

However, as with all great teams, there comes a time when we have to say goodbye. Our Sales Manager, Shawn, is sadly moving on to pastures new at the start of June. Shawn is hanging up his H&F sales hat in order to focus solely on golf sales. Shawn has been with us for 18 months and in that time has built the Sales Department back up after a difficult period during the pandemic. From golf days to functions and membership sales, Shawn is always on the end of the phone to welcome new and returning visitors alike.

We will all be very sad to see Shawn leave, but we wish him every success in his new role.

I hope you are all able to get out to enjoy some sunny rounds of golf. I look forward to joining you for a round on Charity Day, if not before.

See you all soon!

Thank you!

Sarah Blunden