Abridge Golf Club
Course update
Dear member I hope your well? What a Winter we are having ? , but let's remember what's coming
Well it has pretty much rained every day since the start of the year ! The Course has actually held up well and the drainage is coping the best it can.
The constant rain just keeps topping the saturated ground up and with such a high water table already its a struggle .
I have never known so many courses in Essex, and further afield, close owing to the weather and also certain courses that never close even closing , thats how bad it has been !
Yes certain courses that have very different soil structure have faired better but even some of these have closed occasionally this Winter.
This is why as most of you realise and understand the analogy you cannot compare Apples with Pears
On a positive we have great grass coverage and owing to balmy warm temperatures its growing !
I promise you as soon as I can get any cutting machines out my great team will be out there but we just have to be patient , which most of you have been and I thank you for that
I can assure you I have some very frustrated Green Keepers especially when the odd person makes some very interesting comments!
I was asked the question why do we now close the Course more these days, especially with all the drainage works we have done the last 10 years?
The answer is 3 fold.
1. All weather stats will tell you we are suffering record severe weather spikes especially rainfall the last few years !
2. The investment in paths and drainage mean that so many more members can now play all year round which means a lot more 'footfall' so we have to protect the Course more
3. And similar to point 2 we have over double our membership we had 10 years ago
Though I also think golfers now are mostly better educated and want their Courses protected more during weather extremes so that when things do dry out the Course is in better condition
To try and improve things during winters like this one going forward we are hopefully trying some Robotic mowers to enable us to cut grass and create better definition in the wet winters when we cannot get heavy machinery out on the surfaces.
I have been researching this option for some time so lets see how they do in the coming weeks. I will keep you all posted.
Robotic mower for Winter Cutting when the course is too wet to get machines out
The other thing I am planning is to continue with our long term Drainage programme, possibly looking at adding some more strategic 'open' ditches to help surface water get away quicker aswell as increasing the drainage underneath the surface
A few of the fairways that were drained at the start of our drainage programme would now benefit from some more secondary drainage to reopen the primary drains.
The drainage is working well as you can see from the water in our Irrigation lake but we need to keep improving and adding to it I'm sure you all agree?
Imagine how wet we would be if we had not installed all the drainage we have over the last 10 years?
On a positive note we do seem to be slowly winning the battle and drying out slowly especially with balmy 19 degree C temps this week !
Hopefully there are the first signs of Spring ?
First signs of Spring ?
We have this week started topping up some of the new bunkers where we can get vehicles too.
We will also hopefully next week carry on renovating the remaining bunkers
Early march will see us firing up the irrigation! Crazy I know but we have to be ready!
Week commencing March 16th the greens will get a well deserved aeration and the Top Changer will be out !
Top Changer doing a great job
We will also be out repairing , redressing and rolling the paths as soon as we can
The seeder will be out on Tees soon
We are presently finishing off the Development Funded 13th Pond project and should be completed early next week
13th Pond project kindly funded by our Development fund members
On the subject of the Development Fund please make sure you read the email I sent out a couple of days ago as we have added a few extra prizes you can win
We obviously will start cutting areas as soon as we can so whilst we are all fed up with this awful weather situation let's remember whats coming to your golf Course soon !
Let's remember what's coming !
Finally I understand we have had over a dozen new members join our club since the start of the year !
Welcome to you all and I hope to meet you all at some time?
That's it for now
Geoff
Course Manager
ENJOY YOUR COURSE , ENJOY YOUR CLUB .....................................IT'S YOURS REMEMBER !
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