This blog is just an update for everyone with regard to the golf course and what we have going on at the moment. It certainly has been an interesting few weeks to say the least.
We have been experiencing very high levels of growth at the moment, especially on the outfield areas such as semi rough and rough, green and tee banks, ditches etc. It has been very difficult to keep up with it as the whole course has needed to be cut constantly, leaving little time for anything else (I'm sure anyone reading this who cuts their lawn knows how fast things are growing at the moment!).
The greens have been growing well as, after the heat we had a couple of weeks ago, the soil temperature was at its highest so far this year. Then we have had a spell of wet weather which has led to the flush of growth. The down side to this is that warm and wet conditions, along with warmer nights, has meant that disease is never far away from breaking out. At the start of this week we did have an outbreak of Fusarium, quite severe in fact, and so the greens and collars received an application of fungicide to deal with it. At this time of year with the growth the patches will not take long to grow out.
During this spell of weather it has been very difficult to keep a decent pace on the greens. I have spoken with other greenkeepers in the area and they have been struggling too. We have tried to hand cut where possible and iron the greens to try and increase the pace. The greens are much truer than they were which is a fine starting point and hopefully the pace will come shortly. When it is too hot it is very important to not stress out the greens too much.
Spending a lot more man hours on the greens is great to try and achieve results, however it does have a down side. It means that something elsewhere is not being done. To cut the greens using the triple takes around three hours. To hand cut takes three men around three hours each. To iron takes around three hours. As you can see hand cutting will mean six hours lost to the course elsewhere. So while we are always striving to achieve the best results on the greens, we also need to try and maintain everywhere else at the same time.
Factors which also affect our plans are staff holidays, sickness and machinery breakdowns. All of these can cause inefficiency on the course but they are all to some extent inevitable. Anyone who works in a small team knows that losing 20% of your workload for a week or two can seriously affect your efficiency. We are a team of five trying to maintain the course to the highest possible standards, which at this time of year is a full on task. It hasn't helped this week when we received 39mm of rain in about an hour. This has meant that some areas of paths have washed away down the hill.
The machinery that the club uses to maintain the course is of various ages and condition, ranging from brand new triple mowers to other various mowers and the tractor which are over ten years old. Therefore they sometimes can let us down and this downtime can seriously affect our ability to keep up the standards. For example, the fairway mower needed parts and we were unable to cut the fairways for over a week, leading to untidy coarse grasses developing and poor presentation. We are trying to make sure that all the machines are fighting fit for the rest of the season so that we can keep up our standards.
The acquisition of a new triple mower will really help us to provide better quality surfaces on the tees, collars and approaches. The mower is the exact same type as the recently purchased greens mower so that we will have that flexibility and consistency to improve our presentation. It has already given us an immediate impact on what we can achieve and so I fully expect the presentation of the course to improve straight away.
The bunkers are a constant thorn in our side when it comes to presentation. As I said earlier we are fully stretched when working on the course during the summer and unless we constantly are working on the bunkers it is easy for them to deteriorate. This is very possible during spells of extreme weather. During the very hot period they baked and developed a very hard pan making them very hard to rake properly. Then after this week, where we have had over three inches of rain, the bunkers flood and become like concrete, again making them very hard to rake! Add to this the growth of grass around the edges and then we have the additional issue of weeds growing too.
We have started to sort the bunkers and this work is ongoing. With the machinery working and the new machinery now on site we are confident that the golf course will be back to its best in no time at all. We appreciate that you all want the best possible conditions to play golf and we will continue to work hard to achieve it.
Remember if anyone wants to ask a question with regard to the course then please email greens@boltonoldlinksgolfclub.co.uk
