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Tee To Green January

15th January 2025

Find out the latest from our Greenkeepers in this month's Tee to Green.

The Downs Course

Firstly happy new year to you all. I hope you all had a lovely festive break and are looking forward to the upcoming golfing season.

Starting with the weather this month. It has been rather temperamental, with temperature fluctuations between -4 and 8 degrees Celsius. In addition to this, we have had heavy rain, some snow and a glimpse of sunshine to give us some hope.

The course was closed for a few days last month due to snow and some waterlogging. We also had some high disease pressure weather over Christmas with very dewy mornings, no wind and higher temperatures for this time of year. Some of the disease scars activated again and grew a bit larger, however this was checked with a fungicide spray. We will plug a few if the bigger scars in the upcoming weeks to improve the putting surface.

Tees and tee banks are taking a lot of wear with the high volume of golf being played on them. This month we will look to apply a cold start granular feed to the surfaces to promote recovery. In addition to this, we have started to shape some of the tee tops so they are facing in correct direction.

Strike zones are now in operation on the top of the 2nd, 3rd and 5th fairways. These are designated by white dotted lines. Please use the mats to play off rather than the grass to protect these areas for the season ahead, as they are high volume hitting areas.

We have lost a couple of trees this month due to strong winds, a few in the woodland areas, plus a large one on the left side of the 15th fairway. We will be planting trees on the course to replace these and more fruit trees as part of our ongoing ecology program.

Soon we will start opening up areas for turfing, these areas will include walk offs, some bunker edges, path edges and tee banks. Also the 5th tee will be turfed once we have added drainage and sub soil once the estate digger becomes available for us to do the work. The 18th front fairway bunker is flooded again and is GUR. The estates new pipeline is estimated to be commissioned in the next few week's and the current leaking pipe made redundant. Then we will reinstate the bunker. We haven't done any work to it just yet, as until the new pipe line is up and running, there might be some more leaks in that area, so fixing it now would just be a waste of money and resources. This also includes the start of the 17th path which is used for access for the repair and maintenance department.

We have had a slight issue with badger damage occurring on some of the fairways. We have been pretty lucky the last few months to have had minimal damage, however they have started causing some minor issues on fairways 11 and 16. We will repair these areas with Divot mix and seed.

This month we will be verti draining the greens again with a 12mm solid tine to a depth of 200mm, followed by a 8mm micro tine to a depth of 50mm, then Ironed straight away to improve playability. This aeration is vital this time of year and the process will be completed again in February before the main playing seasons starts. This relieves compaction and increases air movement in the soil, plus creates rooting channels to improve plant health. We will also be hollow coring selected greens collars which are having issues with moss. These holes will be filled up with fresh sand to dilute the issue.

See you on the course.

Rob Dyer, Head Greenkeeper, The Downs Course

The Park Course

Firstly, I hope everyone had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year and enjoyed your break if you managed to get one. The course was only shut for Christmas Day so we have only had a small team in over the holidays keeping the course ticking over.

Weather wise the last few weeks has been a mixed bag. From heavy rain, storms, snow to a quite a prolonged cold spell. The cold spell has really helped ease the disease pressure we had over the holidays. It was very dull and misty and we were clearing the dew of the greens and by the time we finished going round them all the dew was back down. Very hard to keep the plant dry with that weather. With our feed and fungicide programs the greens have stayed very clear and great condition for January.

We have in between frosts and wet spells managed to get a most things cut, unfortunately fairways only half of them got cut on New Year’s Day. We thought we had a window to cut before the storm came in but just a couple of light showers in the morning we had to pull off before doing damage, very fine margins this time of year. Greens as said early are performing well. They have been cross tined to 4ins to aid water filtration and vent unwanted gases in the soil profile.

The team have been going great strides with the woodland work and cutting natural rough areas across the course. Most natural rough areas now completed. Raising of canopies in woodland area is still on going and looking great. The team cut and gathered enough branches and logs to have a nice fire when it was really cold, little reward for their hard work.

You may have seen more post and rope out around tees and walk offs. This is to spread the wear in them areas, please can you follow directional signs and keep trolleys away from tee boxes. When we have the heavy dews and frosts we see where the trolleys have been!!

The new putting green has been rested for 3 weeks. Due to it being heavily used and a very young green in its age, it was showing clear signs of wear. This time of year recovery is slower than normal and that green especially sees minimal sunlight from October-March. We reduced the machinery going on it and adjusted the feed program and the good news is that it is looking much better. Still not ready to open as it can quickly turn again so we will keep monitoring it for the next few weeks.

See you on the course.

Scott Peterson, Deputy Head Greenkeeper, The Park Course