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Tee To Green September

23rd September 2025

Find out the latest from our Greenkeepers in this month's Tee to Green.

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The Downs course

I will start with the weather this month, which has been extreme to say the least. More heavy down pours of rain, warm and wet dewy mornings. Now the temperatures have now dropped later in the month. Disease pressure has been high due to this.

We have had another outbreak of Fusarium but was less apparent than the previous outbreak. This was checked with a fungicide. We have also feed the greens with our foliar feed to promote good health. Other maintenance this month has included at 10mm solid tine, sand dusting and overseeding on weaker areas.

The fairways have had a hard maintenance completed on them with a terra rake and brush, to cut into the fairways and brush up any lateral growth. This was then rotary cut, blown off, cylinder cut and sprayed with a foliar feed and wetting agent. These are starting to come back well. They will be overseeded soon as well to establish grass on the bare areas to promote new growth.

Bunkers have been washed down a few times in the previous month and contamination has been caused by the stones on the banks. I have mentioned this in previous blogs, but we will continue to move sand and rake bunkers when resource permits.  General flooding has been an issue with all the rain; however this has really greened up the golf course, which is pleasing to see.

The tees have had a slow release fertiliser applied to promote good growth for the upcoming months. Divoting is completed weekly and we look to have as much grass on them going into the winter months as the golf course still has a lot of play, due to the free draining chalk, which allows us to be open more than other clubs in the area. 

We have had a few trees and big branches down this month. A couple on the 1st where a Beach tree on the left side has lost two big limbs. These were cleared up by our forestry department and now being looked at by them for safety reasons. Also, we have had two large trees come down on the right side of the 12th hole, luckily, they fell into the woodland so has not affected play at all.

The long natural rough is due to be cut and collected this month. This will be done by a contractor and should take about a week, as the rough is a bit thinner this year due to the lack of rainfall in the spring to mid-summer.

See you on the course.

Rob Dyer, Head Greenkeeper, The Downs course

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The Park course

After months of settled weather and hardly any rain, the course looking like a desert, the rain arrived! Once again us greenkeepers are never happy, although very welcomed, it did come at the wrong time for greens maintenance and also for The Revival build and the Event days itself.

Greens maintenance went as planned despite the weather conditions. We had 20mm of rain the night before starting but the greens held up well and didn’t flood. 2 days before maintenance we used vented tines to a depth of 4 inches which really helped with getting the water through the profile. For maintenance we used the GKB machine for the 3rd year in a row. This removes thatch to 25mm and also adds sand to the profile.  We used 15 tons of dried kiln sand during the process on the main greens. The sand has to be bone dry to go through machine to work correctly which was a challenge with the constant downpours while we were doing it. Don’t think I’ve seen the team put on and take off their waterproofs so much in a day. 20mins of torrential rain then the sun out. Huge credit to the team for there hard work in challenging conditions.

Overall considering the weather conditions maintenance went well. Once the greens were cleared of any debris we ironed them and would normally add another dressing. Because disease pressure was very high during the maintenance and stress of the greens during the process we sprayed a fungicide. We left the greens for a few days for the fungicide to work before we applied another 12 ton of dressing followed by a granular fertiliser to help the recovery even more. 2 weeks on and the greens have pretty much fully recovered and looking good, little slower than normal with the lush of growth. This is why we like this process over hollow coring as the recovery is very quick.

Seeing we had more rain in 3 weeks then in the last 5 months the golf course has now seen a flush of growth. So much so we are now cutting most areas twice a week and it’s still growing at fast rate. Most areas have recovered extremely well, especially fairways where we have possibly 3/4 fairways that we will look to overseed in the coming weeks. We will also overseed walkways, walk offs and new bunker faces as well and get some grass coverage before the winter.

There have been some course closures the last few weeks and in previous blogs I have covered this topic. The last thing we want is to close the course but health and safety to golfers is paramount to us. Also is the course playable, greens puddling up, surface water etc. Protecting the course for the future months, damage now can last until spring. We take these 3 factors in when making the decision.

The Copse

The Copse also had greens maintenance. We used a machine (Graden) similar to the GKB but manually operated and doesn’t inject sand into the profile. This also removes thatch but to 20mm. Lots came out and we also sand dressed to fill in the gaps. The GKB would have been too aggressive for these greens as they are still young. On newly established greens the thatch levels are always high. This is the result of lots of feeding and watering to get them to this point. We will use the Graden machine again in spring and next September to get the thatch levels to a manageable point. These also had the same feed as the course and have recovered really well.

Look forward to seeing you the course.

Scott Peterson, Head Greenkeeper, The Park course and The Copse.

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