Golf
GETTING Personal...
Mike Cartwright - cheap and from the 70s, but Mrs C can look forward to a windfall
Who are you? Mike Cartwright, Head Greenkeeper at Highcliffe Castle Golf Club.
Family status? Married with two children aged 8 and 6.
What would you change about yourself? My grumpiness!
What hass been the highlight of your career so far? Winning the Pitchcare photo competition for two consecutive months.
Which three people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? Dara O'Brien, Aryton Senna and Bob Monkhouse.
If you could be anyone for a day, who would it be and why?
Not really anyone but, if ‘anything’, then my cat! She seems to live a life of luxury.
Do you have any bad habits? I have none.
... or any good ones? If you ask me, then plenty.
Do you go to bed worrying about the next day’s workload? Sometimes.
What are you reading at the moment? Angel Time by Anne Rice.
What are your pet peeves? Bad drivers who don’t acknowledge the fact that you’ve given way to them.
If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be? Anywhere on an airplane.
What’s the best part of your job? Working with three great blokes.
… and the worst? Cold early starts in January.
Do you have a lifetime ambition? Just to make sure my family turn out well.
Favourite record, and why? At the moment, its No Milk Today by Hermans Hermits.
Who would you choose to spend a romantic evening with? Obviously my good lady.
30 I PC AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015
If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do? As with all my money, give it to the boss (Mrs C!).
If you were to describe yourself as a musical instrument, what would you be and why? A Bontempi organ, because I’m cheap and from the seventies!
What’s the best advice you have ever been given? One from school is ‘manners maketh man’. Work advice is from Kerran Daly which was ‘it’s not what you take away, it’s what you leave behind’.
What’s your favourite smell? Roses, not the chocolate ones!
What do you do in your spare time? Golf, cycling, photography, and I’ve just started as the local Beaver Scout leader.
What’s the daftest work related question you have ever been asked? Will it be a trolley ban next Thursday?
What’s your favourite piece of kit? Charterhouse topdresser
What three words would you use to describe yourself? Innovative, wonderful, liar!
What talent would you like to have? To drink a glass of water and sing at the same time.
What law/legislation would you like to see introduced? That my kids get free school shoes.
The greenkeeping team with some of their machinery. John Deere dealers New Forest Farm Machinery are a preferred supplier
this causes our drainage problems. But having a subsoil of gravel means that draining these areas doesn’t cause us too many problems.” “The greens and tees are push
up. A couple of the raised greens were built up on piles of hogging, or any other old rubbish they could find. This doesn’t help with drainage, but there is a good depth of rootzone, so the quality of the greens is good.”
Keeping them dry is the main thing through the winter. We’ve installed drains in three of the wettest greens, and we have more to do. The club are not always that keen on the idea of us digging up greens, so the drains we put in are very simple, no large herringbone systems under the whole green, just runs under the wettest areas and into soakaways off the green.” “We have an old, but
serviceable irrigation system. It’s twenty-one years old now, but still does what I ask it to. We have carried out a lot of head changes and are currently replacing the valves as we do suffer with puddling around some of the heads. We have irrigation to the greens, tees and approaches. We use mobile sprinklers on the fairways when it gets really dry, only having small fairways (7ha in total) makes this possible.” “We really suffer with dry spells, being right on the south coast, and we have our own little microclimate. It can be chucking it down ten minutes up the road, and we will not have had a drop.” End of season renovations
consist of aeration, aeration and aeration! The whole course is aerated from October onwards
and this keeps two men busy virtually up until Christmas. “We do suffer with wear areas, so the worst of them are turfed,” Mike explains. “We start our winter projects
from around the beginning of October. We usually have a large list of jobs, and we do as many as we can. It’s usually lots of smaller jobs, such as small drains, reshaping bunkers, tee levelling, tee mat installations, sleeper steps, irrigation and tree work. The last two years have involved larger jobs, such as the two drainage ditches we have put in and building a new bridge.” “This year, we are planning to
carry out more drainage work and, of course, the tree planting programme.” “Any large works, such as the
ditches, have to be priced and put in the budget. All of the smaller jobs come out of the main budget. We put aside £10k for ‘other work’, which includes all winter work and running repairs to the course. Most of the work we do is more labour intensive than materials expensive. As we do 99% of works ourselves, we don’t have the costly expense of outside contractors.” “The only extra help we have
needed recently was with the digging of the two drainage ditches, basically because we didn’t have a digger big enough. All the final shaping and finishing off was done by ourselves.” “We are also planning to plant some wildflowers and set up a small conservation area on part of the course which is out of play. We have all the info on Operator Pollinator, and I’m quite into bug hotels and log
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