A dedicated team who, between them, have over 100 years experience at the club


WITH backing and support from Ray Francis, Chairman of the Greens Committee at Kings Norton Golf Club in Worcestershire, Head Greenkeeper Mick Reece has been able to implement a number of reconstruction programmes that have improved the condition and playability of the course. In 1995 the club produced a forward thinking “Course Improvements Policy Document” which has been its blueprint for the following works programme in recent years:


• Fairway drainage • Bunker reinstatements


• Water course/pond re- developments


• Path reconstructions


• Enlargement and repositioning of tees


KINGS Norton Golf Club was founded in 1892 and began as a nine-hole course. By the turn of the century the course was increased to eighteen holes. The club remained on its original site until 1970 when a housing development was approved and


necessitated a move on to green belt land about five miles away at Weatheroak in


North Worcestershire. The new course was one of the first modern 27 hole golf complexes to be built in the Midlands. It offered members a choice of three nine-hole loops that swept across the Worcestershire landscape. I used to live close to the course and remember it being built. As a 16 year old I remember vividly the opening day, especially as I managed to sneak in to see what the course looked like and to witness the official opening ceremony


performed by Sean Connery. In the early years, the club hosted three PGA Tour Events, and players including Seve Ballesteros, Tony Jacklin, Neil Coles, Brian Barnes, and Americans Charles Coody and Tom Weiskopf competed at Kings Norton.


In 1992 the club celebrated its centenary and was the venue for the English County Finals. The English Ladies Golf Union Stroke Play Championship was also played at the course in 1993. Thirty years after moving to its new home the club is thriving with over one thousand members. It enjoys a lavish setting with stately Weatheroak Hall as its clubhouse.


TWELVE staff are employed to maintain all the outdoor facilities which includes the golf course, gardens and car parking areas, a total of 300 acres. Mick has been at the club for eleven years and, in that time, has managed to build up a dedicated team who, between them, have over 100 years working experience at the club. Mick himself has over 30


years experience, the past eleven being spent at Kings Norton. He holds City & Guilds 1,2,3,4 andPA1, 2 and 6AW. His deputy, Nick Bird, has spent the last ten years at the club holding NVQ 2 & 3 and PA1, 2 and 6AW. Mechanic Richard


Southerton has been at the club for four years whilst many of the club’s assistant greenkeepers also warrant ‘long service’ medals. Kevin Holtham (22 years) is chainsaw competent; Chris Clarke (21); Peter Holtham (18); Ross Carter (5) and currently taking NVQ L2; Kevin Cheshire (3) and currently taking NVQ L2 and Steve Timms, still in his first year and studying UEI in Horticulture In addition the club also employ two trainee


greenkeepers, Alex Blunt and Darran Smith plus a part- time gardener, Mick Collins, who has been working at Kings for eleven years.


KINGS Norton is constructed on Worcestershire clay and is, consequently, prone to waterlogging and course closures. To resolve this problem was a priority for the club and, due to the extent and size of the work involved, they chose to go out to tender. The task was to completely overhaul the fairway and apron drainage systems on all three nine hole courses. The work was undertaken in three phases starting in 2000 and completed in 2002 at a total cost of £72,000. Prior to the major drainage works Mick and his team had renovated all the bunkers over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000.


Since 2002 the club have invested in their own drainage equipment, buying a trencher and material backfill hopper that enables the staff to carry out local drainage works themselves. In fact, in recent years, during the quieter periods between December and March, they have


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