Tee to Green August

The Downs Course

This month has been a good growing month with plenty of rain and warm weather to make the course the greenest I have ever seen it for August. This has made the golf course very aesthetically pleasing. With the growing conditions being so good, we have had an influx of weeds coming into the playing surfaces. These will need to be dealt with in due course with a selective herbicide.

The course for Club Championship week was up to a good standard and was nice to hear so much good feedback over both courses. Since then the surfaces have been performing well and are more consistent throughout the course. At the end of the month we will be doing our greens maintenance programme, aiming to remove another 7-10% of thatch through hollow coring. Thatch is what causes the greens to be soft and creates a slow green, so removing and diluting this will frim up the greens and will slowly increase the speed of the greens, as we continue to do this vital operation.

This month we have installed two hibernaculum’s on the right hand woods on the 17th hole near the pond. This is for amphibians to use as a safe place and will help improve the number of species on the golf course. Also this month we have put out four recycle bins on the golf course, please recycle as many items as possible, as this will help with our sustainability vision.

This month we have found out that we are a finalist for The Golf Environment Awards 2022, nominated in the Environmental Golf Course of the year category. A judge has reviewed our work at the end of August and we will see who wins the award in January 2022. To be a finalist is a great achievement and goes to show all the good ecology practices the golf courses and the estate do is being recognised in our industry.

See you on the course!

Rob Dyer, Head Greenkeeper, The Downs Course

The Park Course

This month has been a good growing month with plenty of rain and warm weather to Through August the greens have remained consistent in speeds and performance. It’s clear to see the benefits from our regular maintenance. We have been using foliar feeds that help aid heat stress and grass health, doing soil feeds that help enhance root growth and improves oxygen availability for the plant and also cultural tasks such as light sand dressing to aid with trueness and speed. All these practices have been vital in keeping the greens at a very high level. It’s been business as usual on the rest of the course.

We have had 74mm of rain throughout the month and the recent raise in temperature has given us nice growth boost, which has helped our reseeding programme on some of the damaged areas throughout the course, especially the damage to the 10th fairway. As you can see the area has improved immensely.

All fairways have been fertilised with our monthly feed programme and a second dose of selective weedkiller was needed on some of the fairways to combat the clover and plantain species.

Bunker work is always an on-going task with fly-mo, edging and topping up sand a regular job throughout the month.

As part of our on-going conservation/habitat management plan, all the long natural rough areas around the course have will be cut and collected on both courses during the second two weeks of September. Although the course will look a little bare, the benefits of carrying out this task are important. It helps remove unwanted weeds and grasses, as well as giving natural grasses a chance to grow and gives the course definition whilst maintaining its playability.

We have received an enormous amount of positive feedback which motivates the team and gives us the drive to continue to achieve our high standards so please keep it coming!

DID YOU KNOW

• The average number of ball marks made on greens per round is eight per golfer.
• Assuming only 130 rounds are played each day on the course your greens receive 1,040 impressions daily.
• 31,000 per month or more than 374,400 per year.

Are you wondering how to make a putt under these conditions?

PLEASE REPAIR YOUR PITCH MARKS!!

See you on the course!

Simon Berry, Head Greenkeeper, The Park Course