It’s been a great start to the winter as the weather has been so good. We have been doing some cutting right up to the start of December. Unfortunately with winter comes ropes, tee mats and fairway mats. I realise that these are not very popular with members but they are there to help protect the course so it can be presented in better condition early in the spring when competition golf returns.
We have mats on the par 3s where most golfers use low irons. This means that when we return to full tees in the spring we have full use of the tee. You need to use a short tee with these mats as the rubber backing is not perforated. We have recently added some rubber tees to the mats and Davie has some tees especially for the mats available in the pro shop.
Fairway mats are used on fairways that are narrow and suffer quit badly with divots. By using the fairway mats we dramatically reduce the amount of divots in these areas. While we could fill these divots, it is not as effective as using the mats. It can take up to a month before a divot has recovered after is has been filled with divot mix, providing you have good growing conditions. Again, using the mats means we can present the fairways in much better condition once we return to competition golf in the spring.
Ropes are used on areas of high wear. Due to the design of some holes and different ground/soil conditions we put up ropes to direct traffic away from high wear areas where everyone tend to travel.
If we did not redirect golfers, these areas would become very compacted/muddy and would take a long time to recover come the spring. We are trying to avoid areas that are very highly trafficked during the summer.
Gone are the days of golf being a summer sport, and with improvements in course maintenance practices and investment in drainage it’s great that we can now play golf all year round but we are still putting the course under a lot of pressure with an average of 700 rounds per week for November.
Golf could be played during the winter with no mats or ropes, but if you expect the course to be in top condition as quickly as possible when we return to competition golf in the spring (and I think you should) we need to be conscious of the damage we are doing during the winter when there is NO recovery, and take measures to reduce it. With this in mind I would ask you to keep repairing pitch marks, take a different route to everyone else to spread the wear and keep buggies and trolleys as far from greens and tees and you can.
We are taking on a number of projects along with our usual winter work this year. Some of the larger projects will include,
- Extend the Irrigation towards the tees on holes 4 and 9. These areas suffer any time we get prolonged dry periods and are in play for a lot of golfers so the added Irrigation will improve the surface.
- Renovate the bunker edges on 9, 11 and 17. Over time sand builds up on these edges and can no longer support the machinery used to cut the grass around them so we will remove the soil, build a new artificial face, replace the soil and re-sod..We did the bunkers on 1, 2, 8, and 11 a few years ago in the same way and it has been very successful.
- Extend the rear of the 5th green. We will reshape the area to the rear of the 5th green and take the green surface that we can’t use from the front and re-lay it at the back. This will give us more usable green space and more pin positions.
Keith Clancy – Course Superintendent
