TENNIS


For a lot of our members, the club is their touchpoint with friends. It is the place they got to socialise; to enhance their mental wellbeing as well as exercise physically


through the grass sward, and also makes it easier for us to break up and clear worm casts more effectively. However, the 2019/20 winter meant that this was completely unattainable. Our first cut of 2020 saw us coming down from a grass length of around 30mm, with this extra length through the winter contributing to a fair amount of die off through damping off and disease. As such, the courts were not in good health, and we spent the first week of lockdown working some very long hours to try and get to grips with the length of the grass on our courts, and the outstanding renovation procedures.


Despite the volume of work, we also had to adjust to a new way of working, to make the workplace as safe as possible. This is a good time to point out how helpful BIGGA (British and International Golf Greenkeepers


Association) have been throughout all of this. We have been BIGGA members for a number of years now and have always found the information they put out to be particularly useful. However, the practical advice they have put out throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, and their lobbying of government to attain clear advice on the position of greenkeepers and ground staff during this time has been invaluable. Indeed, we quickly adapted documents they had created to implement our own safe working practices. This covered everything from the way staff travelled to work, to the sanitisation of equipment, keeping works vehicles to specific operators, and even allocating specific toilets to specific individuals! We needed to ensure our team felt safe coming to work; through all of this, health has been the most important


factor to consider, and it was imperative that we never lost sight of this in pursuing a continued service output from our department.


During the second week of lockdown, the news we had been expecting was announced; namely that the Wimbledon Championships for 2020 had been cancelled. As a result, the rest of the grass court season, including the Birmingham Classic fell off the calendar. Whilst this was a disappointment, it wasn’t entirely unexpected at this point. As we’ve alluded to above, we were becoming aware of the seriousness of the public health crisis and were fully expecting that the 2020 tournament would be very unlikely to happen.


As a result of this, we’d already begun to shift our mindset in the week leading


PC June/July 2020


95


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