COURSE UPDATE

Course Manager Update

Haydn Drinkwater Course Manager

All greens have now been hollow cored and topdressed with approximately 80 tons of sand, which will help reduce organic matter and produce level and firm playing surfaces. Greens will then receive regular verti-cutting alongside light and regular topdressing throughout the season to keep that organic matter content down. Solid tinning will also continue throughout the season as well with a wetting agent applied afterwards to help make watering more efficient.

A granular fertiliser will be applied after the coring to help with recovery, along with liquid fertiliser and seaweed throughout the season.

All tees will be overseeded, vertidrained and topdressed in April to help them recover from winter play. Regular liquid feeds will also be applied throughout the season to aid with recovery and produce good grass density. We will also be looking throughout the season to be levelling a number of tees as part of our bunker and tee programme.

Fairways have been slit, tined and verti-drained which will in-turn keep the surface drier and will help reduce worm casts. Any wear areas will be over seeded, and fertiliser applied. When post and rope are in place, if any, please avoid these areas to encourage growth, and make sure you take drops out of any GUR.

All bunkers will be edged and, where needed, topped up with sand - with every effort made to try and reduce the stones in the bunkers. This will run alongside our bunker plan of renovating and rebuilding all our bunkers over the next 5 years, which will start this year.

All staff are booked in for training over next couple of months, with some doing their spraying tickets and chainsaw tickets. Three of the team are doing level 2 greenkeeping apprenticeships and two on level 3 greenkeeping. This, along with in house training, will help develop staff but also improve standards on both courses.

Pace of Play

Our marshals will be controlling pace of play to the best of their ability as well as ensuring everyone is prompt onto the first tee. I would like to remind you that we aim for sub-4hr20 rounds at busy times but know things can run over on occasions.

While increasing marshal numbers and tree work on course will help with this, please see a few tips below that everyone should keep in mind to encourage a better pace:

• 3 minutes only while looking for a ball

• Clubs left to the side of the green that leads to the next tee

• Adopt ready golf where possible, play your next shot even if you aren’t the furthest away

• Teeing off on your tee time and leaving that 8 minute gap does help with pace of play as it avoids that initial squash of players that can easily turn into a backlog