The winter maintenance programme 2018/19 will revolve around drainage. The priority for the work will be holes 2 and 6.
Hole 6 will see a continuation of the work carried out earlier this year in front of the tee and along the left of the hole towards the greenside bunkers of hole 11 and the new tee on 6/12. As part of this project we will carry out the remaining path work between holes 11 and 12.
Some investigation work has already begun on the second hole where the drains appear to have dropped and caused a backlog from the right of the hole and back to the fairway. Inspection channels will be dug above the existing drains to check for blockages. New outlets will then be added and run through the right of the hole towards the OOB.
Any spoil from the above two holes will be transported to the 7th tee to help widen the tee box to the right.
Once work on the above is complete, we will move onto the 5th and 9th holes which have also been troublesome in previous years. In terms of the 5th, we will explore a swaily dyke, similar to that on the 3rd to run ditch to ditch across the hole. A small bridge would be required to players to cross from the tee to the green. A new path would be added as part of this process.
The pond on the 9th hole needs draining of any remaining water. Michael Rollason has confirmed he has a 3” water pump which we can use for this. The lining has been removed where possible and in the process 5 tears were found following this summer’s extreme heat which made the lining brittle.
Once the pond had been drained we will look at filling in the remaining hole and reshaping.
As part of the course development plan, we want to reopen the ditch across the 6th hole this winter. We will also use this spoil for the required tee work on the 7th tee.
For all of the above to take place, we will again need machinery from Fairfax. Mark has already notified them that this will be imminent. It has been confirmed that we will be taking over the remaining space of the shed which will allow us to store any machinery we require.
Graham mentioned that we could also look at digging out “the moat” to the left of the 10th hole as this was a particularly bad area last winter. A large excavator will be required for this work and any spoil would be used to the right of the 9th to shape the edge of the course along the OOB.
Tree maintenance will form the second part of the winter plan. The roots of the 3 trees to the front left of the 6th green are now protruding the apron. We will therefore look at taking out at least 2 of these which are causing the most damage. We will look to keep the 3rd to ensure there is some protection to the 7th tee.
We will also work to remove any tree stumps which remain from last winter, specifically those to the right of the 9th hole. We will request a quote from Ben Rutter for his assistance with his stump grinder to help achieve this.
Mark highlighted that trees behind the 7th green will also need some attention as they are blocking light to the 7th green and becoming dangerous to users of the public road through the course.
Throughout all of the works, we will try to encourage scheduled work parties, both on midweek and weekends, to help achieve as much of the above as possible.
