South England County's week

We had the pleasure of hosting the South of England County's week for the ladies from the 9th-13th of June. 

The tournament is held between 5 different countys. All playing 36 holes a day match play apart from the one rest day respectfully.

This was a great way for the club to show what a great club it is. The members who volunteered by welcoming, ball spotting and running the halfway house for all the county's top players was fantastic to see. 

The welcome they got in the clubhouse and the catering was great and well recieved, with lots of comments about how friendly the club is. The guys in the pro shop ran the range like true professionals. Even managing to clear the practice balls before we needed to cut in the afternoons between play. 

The greenkeepers story

We, the greenstaff loved hosting a tournament week. An England golf tournament is always something to get excited about. 

It also gave us something to work towards right from the beginning of the year. At that point we planned the fertiliser applications as best we could all the way back to the start of the season to make sure growth rates were not exaggerated during the week of the competition. We also planned to finish jobs off around the course and not take to much extra work on so as not to have works half finished around the course. 

We wanted to show the course in good condition and something the members could be proud of. 

The greenstaff started off by working extra hours in the weeks running up to the competition to get on top of the course going into the week. One thing we have to plan for is that no detail work using equipment like strimmers or flymos as the noise is very loud to be used during these events. 

All the staff came in for a full course set up on Sunday night. We were joined by Andy Hart a greenkeeper from Old Fold Manor GC, who volunteered to help us as we were one man short of being able to get the course fully cut. I would like to thank him for his help. It was appreciated. 

The rest of the week by doing split shifts of work. 

In the mornings we cut and rolled (ironed) greens

We adjusted the amounts of cuts daily depending on the green speeds to try and keep them consistent. 

We changed holes daily. This was done daily mainly so the team with the rest day would not be at a disadvantage against the teams that played the day before. Daily pin charts were produced. 

The bunkers were raked daily

We also divoted the tees daily and cut aprons

One issue we did have to deal with was the pollen from the poplar trees on the greens needed to be cleared constantly as finding your ball on the green could have been an issue :-) 

In the afternoon we cut and rolled the greens (again) and got the course cut.

We had some tournament support machines in (FOC) for the week from Toro. They were good enough to lend us a fairway mower (quicker than our second one) and rough mower. This allowed us to get the fairways and rough cut in record time along with our machinery for tees, semi rough, surrounds and tee banks.

The course presentation stayed high all week with the extra mowers! 

We also spent time keeping the moisture levels correct by hand watering areas that required that little but extra

We even let Adam Clark our new greenkeeper (who's not a bad golfer) have a putt ;-) just to give us his point of view (along with David Wilton the clubs pro). 

And finally here's a picture of the team, who worked so hard, I was very proud by the level of professionalism and dedication they showed during the week. It was great being part of something different and something the club could be proud of. 

Just an insight to our week. 

Matt