Just before the heavy rain arrived the greens team completed a significant amount of spiking and slitting to try and open the surfaces of the golf course. This was designed to allow as much water as possible to be absorbed. This would’ve definitely helped the golf course recover faster but would’ve never been able to cope with the amount of water we got in that 24 hour period which was circa 70mm for the 24 hours. With the drought firmly behind us and the autumn starting to show its face we are now in recovery mode to try and get as much coverage back on the golf course as possible before the winter comes. Towards the end of September we have an overseeding machine arriving. The plan is to overseed the approaches, sparce areas leading up to greens and then make a start on more fairway overseeding. The green staff have already made a start on repair work around some bunkers and this will be ongoing over the coming weeks. Moving forward we now have a little more water available to us due to the introduction of our bore hole. We are going to widen our reach with our irrigation system around the greens to incorporate the bunker surrounds. This will be done next year and should help some areas avoid burning out quite as quickly in the peak heat. We are also looking into adding some irrigation into our approaches. We are currently costing this and as soon as we have a final decision it will be put out to the membership. A rough plan is to try and do a few holes each year. The 16th pathway has been raised as a problem by a number of people and it is something we are looking into and have a specialist that we are talking with in the next week. Our concern has been any loose material such as bark chippings will wash onto the 15th green in the event of further heavy rainfall, which is what happened with pinecones etc during the heavy rainfall a few weeks ago. Using other aggregates may mean that these will move when the roots grow and become more prevalent as time goes on. This will put us in the same situation as where we are now so it's important that we execute a sustainable longterm solution. I hope this explains some of the things that’s been happening in the past few weeks. I will send out a more in-depth report with all our autumn and winter plans once they have all been finalised, thanks again to all the members for their support over a particularly challenging summer. Kind regards Tom Price Green chairman