Friday 28 November 2014

Course improvements - week 2

This week, Lakeland Construction finished their work on the golf course. You will notice some changes to the 2nd green complex, 3rd/12 tees and 9th tee.

Hopefully, you will all acknowledge that, in time, these changes will improve maintenance practices and add to the playability of these areas.


The 2nd green complex now has a much smaller bunker left of the green. In front of this, we will turf this roll off area and now it as part of the approach. Behind the green, this area now falls off nicely.


The 12th white tee has been realigned to the right, making it a more central driving hole. This should open up the start of the fairway considerably.


Each new tee has been laser levelled and the old, rotting sleepers have been removed. They all now have a tee bank that can easily be mowed. We stripped the turf off the 9th tee and this has been used to re-turf the new ladies 4th tee.


Lastly, the 9th tee has been shifted to the left and this allows all of the tee to be utilised for teeing up the ball. This newly shaped tee also aims directly to the centre of the 9th green.

Although there are several areas that will require turfing and seeding, we are condident that this work will be finished within the next 4-6weeks (weather permitting). In any event, these areas will all be ready for play for the new 2015 golfing season.

Many thanks to Tom, Len, the Captain  and Phil Lockett for assistance with turfing this week.

Have a great weekend and enjoy your golf!

Friday 21 November 2014

Course improvements - week 1


This week has been busy! We have started to implement the golf course masterplan with some golf course improvements. 

Lakeland Earthworks are the contractors and they specialise in golf course and sports construction. Adie, the on site shaper, has produced some excellent work at holes 2, 4, 7 and 8.


We now have a new green side bunker at hole 4 and the base for path material to be installed too. In addition, 2 ladies tees have been created at holes 4 and 8. 



Adie also re shaped the back of the greens at holes 2 and 7. We have still some work to do at holes 2, 3 and 9 but the majority of the course improvement work has been finished. We are extremely pleased with the work carried out by Lakeland and, in particular, Adie. We look forward to your feedback and hope that you can all see that these improvements will, in time, improve the layout, aesthetics, playability and maintenance of the golf course.

I will provide more photos, information and updates in next week's blog.

Have a great weekend and enjoy your golf!



Friday 14 November 2014

Tree felling...and more rain!

This week, we have been hit by steady rain that, whilst intermittent, has affected our opportunities of getting some mowing done.



What has been beneficial is some very worthwhile verti draining on some greens and approaches (to include temporary greens). This will assist in the drainage  of surface water on these playing areas and the open spike/tine holes will assist in keeping them drier.

We have also had an approved chainsaw trainer/assessor on the golf course this week and these guys have felled a fair few trees. 


Areas of the golf course are now opening up and this will aid recovery shots from tree areas as well as speeding up mowing and reducing the quantity of fallen leaves that have to be collected each year.


The really positive thing is that the work is not costing members any money and it starts the ball rolling with the execution of the golf course masterplan. 


We anticipate that we have now started a great partnership with the chainsaw instructor. This will help in delivering a golf course that maintains a parkland feel but is adopting a sensible approach to woodland management at the same time. We hope that you will all start to see the benefits to this excellent work and we welcome constructive feedback.


Finally this week, thanks to Mike Hall and Nick Fletcher for installing 3 new ball washer consoles on holes 3, 5 and 7. They look fantastic! Well done guys. 

Have a great weekend and enjoy your golf.

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