It’s been a typical summer week, mainly focused on maintaining course presentation.  We’ve only had 2.5 mm rain, but have not needed to use the green sprinklers - the moisture readings were showing around 30% hydration, which is the target.  The tees did get some watering.




Gavin was able to spray the greens with growth regulator last week, which had an immediate effect:  the speed on Friday morning was 9’ 5” despite them only being rolled that morning.  Next week ahead of the Club Championships we will start to speed them up, targeting 10’, by lowering the cut height fractionally plus cutting and rolling every day.  The current very hot spell will help.  It needs to be said, we can’t treat the greens like this all the time - the fine grasses that make our greens stand out locally won’t tolerate that sort of treatment for long.




Staff news:  James (aka ’Spider’) reports that his knee surgery has gone well and that he has already commenced rehab/physio and is expecting to make a full recovery.  This will take some time but we look forward to welcoming him back.    The good news is that our new starter Spencer arrives on Tuesday:  although he is newly qualified, with Gavin and team supporting, he will soon learn the ropes.




There is (not good) news on the Canada geese family.  Despite dad’s diligent attention, a local fox progressively made off sadly with all 5 chicks, one by one. Mum and dad have now left the island/course.  We are well aware that the birds could be an aggressive and a messy nuisance, but at a distance they were also very watchable.  As previously reported, later this year we will remove the island on the 5th pond which used to encourage them to settle on the course and we hope to avoid the problems of earlier this year going forward.




Course committee

29 June 2025