Firstly, congratulations to Wendy Tottenham on once again winning the Women’s Club Championship for 2019. Congratulations to all that took part (and finished) in this year’s event in extremely testing conditions. Good luck to those playing in tomorrow’s final round of the Men’s event.
You may have noticed a lack of visible activity happening in the last few weeks in regards to works, however lots of behind the scenes works have continued. The treatment plant has unfortunately been offline for a couple of weeks but is back operational this week and producing. Both tanks are full but as yet we do not have power to the new pump shed. This has required the use of the diesel pump to deliver water to the course and the process takes around 3 times longer than the electric pumps. Whilst the new pump shed was being built we relied on the diesel pump as our only source of water to all the greens. Superintendent Rob Bradley has stated “Greens have been knocked around visibly by the heat we had. With the use of our moisture meters and a lot of hand watering we have increased the levels back to a minimum of 18% field capacity, that’s where we would like them, at one point we were 4% in some greens, anything under 12% the plant is starting to wilt and basically starting to die.
The collars which are Fescue have browned off, which is a summer dormancy type thing, the concern is that normally happens February/March so it just shows how hot and dry we have been.
The green surrounds have had their height lowered and have taken almost a month for the mower to settle at that height without scalping. The contrast between fairway height, this height and then to the normal rough is a lot better with play a bit fairer than missing a fairway by a foot and being dead.” The greens still aren’t where we want them to be but we will be using the hollow mini-tyne on them, probably early December, then follow up with a “harder core” after Easter. We will not be using the cross-tynes again on the greens after trialling them a couple of months ago.
The power will be commissioned to the pump shed by the end of this month and allow full functionality.
Course Architect Michael Clayton visited last week, with discussions surrounding the 6th hole. Rob and the guys will start construction on a new 6th tee soon, to the right of the existing. Course play will not be affected during this period. We will then move down the fairway to work on the next stage of the re-design which will include some tree removal on the left side of the fairway on the approach. A new “back” 7th tee will also be built to keep the length on the hole.
Finally, I’d like to thank a nameless member for taking time to come and see me yesterday at The Range. I really value your feedback and look forward to working on your recommendations.