Greenkeepers Report

Hello to all members and guests,

This week has seen the weather yet again become warm and dry, growth on the course is still becoming an issue on majority of our playing surfaces.

Irrigation

Our irrigation is still working hard placing large consumptions of water to our greens and tees surfaces. We have a program running at night and we are hand watering during the day to keep our moisture levels in the soil profile.

Reason behind our hand water regime is to help dry spots or slopes maintain water.

Greens

We have sprayed the greens this week with two different applications, one a fertilizer to help with growth along with colour and our second application was a wetting agent that helps penetrate moisture deep into the roots to hold water for a longer extended period.

Tees

Firstly, I would like to ask all members to continue playing off the white blocks, I have seen a lot of members playing off the blue tees in recent weeks. These are for competitions and not for general play. Our blue tees are not the biggest and it takes time to recover so we want to limit the amount of play for competitions.

General maintenance

We have continued to work on areas such as hedgerows and maintenance on the hotel gardens. A lot of this work goes unnoticed from a golfer’s view. We have had large tree limbs fall in previous weeks so general clear up has been completed along the driveways and surrounding areas.

Bunkers

Following on from our renovation project on the 6th we have had another 60 tonnes of sand ordered. We are looking to continue our developments around the green sides in the next couple of weeks. I shall complete the three remaining bunkers around the 6th and 9th greens and move onto the 8th and 1st bunkers. This will be a monthly ongoing project until all bunkers are complete. This will take time but please be patient and understand they are not an overnight task that can be completed within a short time.

Finally, I hope you are all continuing to enjoy our warm weather and your golf at The Welcombe golf club. On behalf of myself and the greenkeeping team, we would like to thank you all for your continued support.

Many Thanks
Billy Hayes
Head greenkeeper The Welcombe golf resort