GOLF


circles on the fairway where the grass had died off. The members asked what we were going to do about it? My reply was, nothing, they will come back naturally. We have to keep our eye out for tent pegs when cutting the fairways and fields once they have gone. The greens on those two holes were roped off, but that didn’t stop people playing ball games on there! Fortunately, they didn’t cause much damage. With the weather on our side last year, the fairways were like concrete, so the damage was limited.” “We try our best to maintain the course during this period, but we do end up on gate duties etc. I will park my motorhome up over the weekend, which I use when I go racing, it means I do not have the difficulty of getting in and out. It will be a welcome break for my team to not have to deal with moving chairs and tables up and down and deal with working around the campers. On the downside, I won’t get to catch up with those who attend each year and recognise me, and the fact the owner will lose out on that much-needed revenue it brings in.” Tony’s motto, when it comes to the


maintenance of the course, is just do as much as we can with what we have available to us. “I would like to get more topdressing on the greens, but we probably get forty tonnes on if we are lucky due to finance and time. The calendar is so full it can be hard to work around everything. Then, once you have topdressed, you kill the blades on your greens machine, so we then need the money for a regrind. It’s all a delicate balance. We used the shutdown period to apply a load of dressing, and we just left it; we didn’t have to worry about dragmatting it in, the wind and rain helped get it into the surface. Some people will stick to what they do year on year, whereas we have to just play it by ear.”


“We cut the greens with the Jacobsen Eclipse every day in summer, and we will try and leave the height of cut as high as possible, generally around 5mm, as they tend to dry out so quickly. We verti-cut early in the season to try and remove some of the moss which we get. I will go over the greens again in the next few weeks, but not quite as aggressive. If time allows, every


We are looking to build some bug hotels with some of the pallets we have lying around but, like with everything else, it’s getting the time


24


PC August/September 2020


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