What a difficult winter its been! We’ve had storm Brendan, storm Ciara and storm Dennis, and the ground is absolutely saturated. We’ve lost at least six trees to high winds and our course noticeboard has been ripped to shreds! Like most of the other local clubs we’ve had to give in to the weather and close the course on numerous occasions. Apparently we’ve even had ducks swimming down the 1st fairway!
We’re just hoping for a few weeks of calm weather so that the water table can recede and the fairways can dry out. When this happens the greens will drain much faster, thanks to our new drainage work, and hopefully Stuart can jump into action and start preparing the greens for the summer.
The first task will be to verti-drain and top dress the greens, and this work has been scheduled for the week beginning Monday 23rd March. The first two days will be spent spiking the greens and then we’ll need a further two days to top dress with sand. The greens will be a little lumpy that week, but we do have the vibratory rollers to help smooth out the bumps. Of course all of this is weather dependant!
In January we dug over the 4th tee to remove the concave shape. We rotavated the soil and re-turfed tee, and now it looks really great! We’re looking forward to a flat teeing stance in the forthcoming season! Our plans for the 3rd green swale have been stalled by the weather. The work will still go ahead, but we need to wait for the ground to dry out before cutting loose with the JCB.
In March/April we plan to over-seed all of the muddy areas near to the greens, in particular to the left of the 5th and the 7th, and to the right and rear of the 9th. Also, we plan to fill-in some of the deeper fairway depressions on the 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th. The idea is to ensure there are fewer depressions that cannot be reached by the fairway mower.
Finally, take a look at the new club website. www.cheshamgolf.co.uk There’s a section dedicated to the golf course, with detailed descriptions of each hole and some aerial shots from last summer’s drone footage.
Happy Golfing!
Richard Lewis
Chair of Course