Month: August 2021

FOR THE GOOD OF THE GREENS !

Monday, as in the club diary, sees us start carrying out essential greens maintenance .

I appreciate a few people may find this disruptive but it has to be done. This year we will try to keep it to a minimum but still making sure it’s for the ‘green’s ‘ benefit! I think most golfers now understand it’s vital this work is carried out.

We will be deep spiking, spiking, overseeding and then heavy topdressing greens. The reasons for this is to get vital air, thatch reduction and to relive general compaction caused by golf and machine traffic . The work gives roots a chance to flourish and the general health of the grass plant to maintain or increase. After this the greens will get a good feed to aid with their recovery.

Veri Drain
Deep verti-drain spike on the greens first
Verti drain
followed by a shallow spike

To help us get this work done as quick as we can, THE BACK 9 HOLES WILL BE CLOSED ALL DAY MONDAY 23RD AUGUST. Please be patient with us, as i have already said, its essential we get this work done.

When you do play golf next you will notice that we are preparing temporary greens on holes 1 and 13. This is because on the 1st and 2nd September we will be installing drainage into the greens on these holes. This is continuing with the drainage of greens programme we started 5 years ago. These 2 greens will be out of action for up to 4 weeks. Obviously we will be doing our best weather permitting to get them back in play as quick as we can. I will keep you updated more on this in the next couple of weeks.

Drainage of the 1st and 13th greens starts the 2nd September

It’s the time of year when also other renovation works start to happen and you may have already seen this bad boy out on the fairways scarifying them. It does a great job and doing them in August means they recover much quicker.

The big boy is out scarifying Fairways

Once September arrives we propose to carry on with the drainage work on the fairways. We intend to put a few more primary pipes on the 7th and 8th fairways and then move onto the 14th and 13th fairways with the hope of getting them completed by the early part of October again weather permitting.

Drainage works re-commence in September

I’m sure you have noticed how well they are getting on with the new Irrigation Lake, I hope to find some time to do a few drone flights over the site for you all to see.

Site clearing for the new Irrigation Lake

As you see from the photo below my staff have been getting used to their new toy ! A boat ! to keep on top of the reeds

Simon drew the short straw!

That’s it for now , I will post how we are getting on later next week

Regards

Geoff

Enjoy your Course Enjoy your Club……………it’s your’s remember!

WE ARE DIGGING A HOLE

On Monday I am pleased to announce that we will commence construction of our Irrigation Lake. This is the 3rd phase of our Irrigation and Drainage plan which we set out 4 years ago.

Vineyards and Wineries: Lake and Pond Management
An example of an Irrigation Lake

For those interested, it will hold approx 34,000 cubic metres when full. To put this into perspective its about the volume of about 14 Olympic swimming pools !

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: Aquatics Centre - Water Sports -  visitlondon.com
An Olympic swimming pool holds 2500 cubic metres of water

Part of the contractors remit will also be to clear out, reshape and reseal the pond between the 4th and 5th. This pond we will then feed drainage pipes into from various holes to ‘catch’ water and in turn from this pond we will pipe water into the new Irrigation Lake.

The contractors will also be using some of the excess soil to ‘bank up’ behind the 2nd green, we will also be making the 2nd green slightly bigger and finally they will be digging out the 2nd pond and hopefully resealing it.

It will take approx 6-8 weeks to complete if all goes to plan! Hopefully there will not be too much disturbance to your Golf but please be patient . We do not envisage any hole closures whilst the main lake is built but we will have to close the 2nd hole for approx 5 days when those works are done. We may also either have to move the tees forward or close the 4th hole when this pond is repaired.

So all exciting stuff and making us much more self sufficient and great use of recycling water. I will keep you updated on the progress of the works and will also record some Drone footage for you to see the works.

If you wondered why we have had tree works done on the 13th hole this week, this was being done by the Electricity Board as the Trees were too close to the high voltage overhead cables.

Hopefully you have been enjoying your Course the last few months despite the ‘not great’ weather.

Congratulations to Mandi and Lol our new Captains.

We will be commencing our Summer renovations w/c 23rd of August but I will give you more details of that in the next couple of weeks

Regards

Geoff

Enjoy your Golf Course , Enjoy your club………..it’s yours remember!

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