Blimey it's felt like winter this week! The cold wind was so strong on Tuesday it managed to bring down the willow tree by the Half Way House. More on that in the Greenkeepers news later.

On the bright side, hopefully plenty of you will have been losing some balls this week in the testing conditions as we have some amazing offers on balls.

Titleist balls 

With every purchase of a dozen balls from our Titleist range, you will receive 3 balls FREE. This applies to both NXT, velocity and DT TruSoft

Srixon balls

With every purchase of Srixon AD333 Tour dozen balls you will receive 6 balls FREE.

Both of these are fantastic ways of stocking up your balls for the summer ahead, particularly with the anticipated heatwave next week.

Click here to find out more about our fantastic ball ranges.


And finally regarding golf balls...

As you are all aware our range ball service offers exceptional value for money at just £1 per token but with heavy ball losses and lengthier collection times, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain this price. 

Ball losses on the range are understandable, but when range balls are being found in the pond on the 7th....

I will leave it at that...


 

Motocaddy ex rental trollies for sale

We have an amazing offer on a limited number of Motocaddy electric S1 trollies.

These trollies are 12 months old and will come with a 6 month warranty on the trolley, but the best bit is that they have NEW lithium batteries which come with a limited 5 year warranty.

Given that the cost of a lithium battery is £199, these trollies are an exceptional offer at only £249 

First come first served.

Come and have a chat with us in the pro shop, or click here to get in touch if you are interested in owning one of these.


 

This week on the course has felt more like winter for the greenkeeping team with the cold winds. The wind however has given us dry conditions all week which has allowed the team to get a good quality of cut across the course. Unfortunately the willow tree on the 9th fell casualty to the strong winds when a large piece of the tree was broken off, narrowly missing two golfers on the 9th green. After an inspection on the tree, it was deemed to be unsafe and therefore felled the following day.

Bunkers have been a top talking point recently, so we would like to explain the direction we are looking to take them.

The long wispy grass around the bunkers in most cases is intentional. Many golf clubs use the long grass to enhance the bunkers both visually and to add character to the course. In our case, long wispy grass around the bunkers is in line with our heathland nature and is something we really want to push.

This is however, a working progress and some areas we are happy with, others we need to work on. We aim to have a clean run in edge on all bunkers to ensure the balls run freely into the hazards which is now part of our maintenance programme. We are extending the long grass on the 7th/ 17th to get the desired effect which has been marked with a dashed white line. PLEASE DO NOT MISTAKE THIS LINE FOR GUR. For future reference, if the Greenkeepers GUR an area it will always be a solid white line.

Now the seed heads are starting to show on the bunker edges, and once the green lushness is replaced with brown/yellow wavy grass the bunkers will look stunning.

This approach to the maintenance of the bunkers will also increase the life of the fine turf. Bunker banks are constantly blasted with bunker sand, and when mown short with a flymo/strimmer are prone to burning off. This in turn will open doors for other grasses which will prevent us from growing thin wispy rough in these areas. Leaving the grass long prevents/prolongs this from happening.

On the topic of bunkers, could we please remind the members that trolleys are not allowed between the green and bunkers. These are generally tight walkways that cannot take that amount of traffic. This rule is in place to protect the turf in close proximity to the green. There is a sign on the 1st tee clearly stating this rule.

To combat the recent growth, we have been using the Amazone to work on our longer rough. This machine scarifys, cuts and collects all in one pass, and is key to the development of our long rough. The areas we have worked on have been thick/dense and generally course grasses. The aim is to promote the finer grasses so the rough can be left long without slowing down the speed of play.

The greenkeeping team