This month has seen further rainfall with some very heavy and prolonged showers at times. Despite this the course is finally starting to dry out and this has allowed us to cut fairways, tees and approaches for the first time this year, we also managed to get some areas of semi rough cut on new land. Mowing is something that we will start to carry out across all areas of the course as and when ground and weather conditions allow.
The water hazard “Moat” on the 17 has now had the bank landscaped; this now makes it a much more playable hazard as well as it been much more visually pleasing and adds a nice feature to this hole.
After much discussion and been advised (last year) by the golf clubs agronomist it was decided the Poplar tree in front of the 9th tee was to be felled rather than reduced, this has improved the tee shot from the current 9th tee and also made room for the new 9th ladies/ winter tee to be built over the spring /summer months.
Greens have also been fertilized this month, this is a very low input fertilizer that has been applied and will help to give the plant some colour & strength and weaken/reduce moss on the surfaces. Tees and approaches will also be fertilized late March/ early April to help improve overall condition of these surfaces.
Greens renovations are also taking place this month, this will be starting the week commencing Monday 14th March, we will be starting work on the greens to begin with and this will see the greens been hollow cored, this process will create 1000’s of small holes on the greens surface, once completed and cleared the greens are to be top dressed with sand then brushed to backfill the holes that have been created, Final the greens will be over seeded with a bent/fescue seed mix. Tees and approaches will also be renovated; this process will see these areas been verti-drained to help relieve some of the ground compaction that has occurred over the winter months then scarified and finally followed up with dressing the surfaces with sand.
Finally Thanks to John Prickett, John Leonard, Malcolm Woodward and Richard Driffield (Drax Barlow site manager) we have managed to acquire 50 ton of lytag free of charge from the lytag plant on Drax power station, this material is primarily going to be used for surfacing the paths around the course, as well as this it is an excellent drainage material so could also be used for any future drainage works around the golf course.
Ben Rutter
Head Greenkeeper
