Greens Communication
Henry Doran
Bringing Fairways Back (towards tees)
A number of senior members have brought it to my attention that they are struggling to reach the fairways, particularly of the back tees and that this is making it very difficult to score reasonably and is affecting their enjoyment of the game. The Greenkeeper and I have discussed this and he has agreed to bring the fairways back closer to the tees on the following holes: 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 15, 16 and 18. Members should however be patient as the cut height cannot be dropped instantly to fairway height but must be taken down over a few weeks to the desired cut height.
Divot Filling
The Greenkeeper has asked me to thank the members for their considerable efforts in using the divot fill mix to repair their divots. A lot of members have been very fastidious in using the divot mix and it is making a clear difference to our golf course. We would request that all members should endeavour to make this part of their golfing routine. The Greenkeeper has also asked that members also use the divot fill on the tees, in particular, the par 3 holes.
Divot Filling Method
As per previous instruction if you remove a large intact dollar bill sized divot the best option is obviously to just replace you divot and press it into the ground.
On the other hand if the divot is shallow and breaks up it is best not to attempt to replace it but rather just fill the hole to ground level and press it down.
Overseeding of Fairways and Tees
The planned overseeding of the fairways and tees is now complete and we would like to thank the members for their cooperation during this work. As you all know this overseeding was done with a mixture of drought-resistant modern cultivars with the objective of making our fairways more drought resistant and lush in dry weather. You will all be aware that we have put 400-500 tonnes of sand on our fairways every year for a number of years which improved drainage and gas exchange at the grassroots and greatly improved the quality of our fairways. But as always in greenkeeping, you can have too much of a good thing. The soil profile on our fairways is now very sand rich which as I said greatly improves drainage which is excellent in the winter but has a downside in the summer. Keeping the right moisture content in the soil profile for optimum growth in summer requires more water due to the improved drainage. Therefore to balance this effect we are using the drought tolerant cultivar in our overseeding program.
For those of you that are interested, we injected a total of 3000kg of seed into the tees and fairways at a rate of 20g/ m2 On a number of our weaker fairways we doubly overseeded that is the overseeding was carried out in two directions. On these fairways, 3, 5,10,13,15 and 16, the overseeding rate was 40g/ m2. Again just for the record the seed mix was carefully chosen by our consultant Mr Eddie Connaughton and consisted of the following grass varieties:
Barcrown Slender Creeping Re 5.0%
Bargreen II Chewing Fescue 5.0%
Barolympic Perennial Ryegrass 30.0 %
Barsignum Perennial Ryegrass 30%
Sergal Strong Creeping Red F 30%.
Lastly, for information, this seed mix has now been incorporated into our standard divot fill mix to further develop these grasses on our fairways and tees.
Henry Doran
A number of senior members have brought it to my attention that they are struggling to reach the fairways, particularly of the back tees and that this is making it very difficult to score reasonably and is affecting their enjoyment of the game. The Greenkeeper and I have discussed this and he has agreed to bring the fairways back closer to the tees on the following holes: 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 15, 16 and 18. Members should however be patient as the cut height cannot be dropped instantly to fairway height but must be taken down over a few weeks to the desired cut height.
Divot Filling
The Greenkeeper has asked me to thank the members for their considerable efforts in using the divot fill mix to repair their divots. A lot of members have been very fastidious in using the divot mix and it is making a clear difference to our golf course. We would request that all members should endeavour to make this part of their golfing routine. The Greenkeeper has also asked that members also use the divot fill on the tees, in particular, the par 3 holes.
Divot Filling Method
As per previous instruction if you remove a large intact dollar bill sized divot the best option is obviously to just replace you divot and press it into the ground.
On the other hand if the divot is shallow and breaks up it is best not to attempt to replace it but rather just fill the hole to ground level and press it down.
Overseeding of Fairways and Tees
The planned overseeding of the fairways and tees is now complete and we would like to thank the members for their cooperation during this work. As you all know this overseeding was done with a mixture of drought-resistant modern cultivars with the objective of making our fairways more drought resistant and lush in dry weather. You will all be aware that we have put 400-500 tonnes of sand on our fairways every year for a number of years which improved drainage and gas exchange at the grassroots and greatly improved the quality of our fairways. But as always in greenkeeping, you can have too much of a good thing. The soil profile on our fairways is now very sand rich which as I said greatly improves drainage which is excellent in the winter but has a downside in the summer. Keeping the right moisture content in the soil profile for optimum growth in summer requires more water due to the improved drainage. Therefore to balance this effect we are using the drought tolerant cultivar in our overseeding program.
For those of you that are interested, we injected a total of 3000kg of seed into the tees and fairways at a rate of 20g/ m2 On a number of our weaker fairways we doubly overseeded that is the overseeding was carried out in two directions. On these fairways, 3, 5,10,13,15 and 16, the overseeding rate was 40g/ m2. Again just for the record the seed mix was carefully chosen by our consultant Mr Eddie Connaughton and consisted of the following grass varieties:
Barcrown Slender Creeping Re 5.0%
Bargreen II Chewing Fescue 5.0%
Barolympic Perennial Ryegrass 30.0 %
Barsignum Perennial Ryegrass 30%
Sergal Strong Creeping Red F 30%.
Lastly, for information, this seed mix has now been incorporated into our standard divot fill mix to further develop these grasses on our fairways and tees.
Henry Doran