Dry Week

Finally a dry week, and as I sit and write this, a dry Saturday morning, hopefully this will continue for some time to come.

With the wet weather comes all of the problems associated with it, such as water in bunkers and soggy parts of the course. Although we have rebuilt quite a few bunkers over the past couple of years, we still have plenty that don't drain as well as they could. Of the 70 odd bunkers we have, there are about 20 that don't drain within a day or two, which is not quick enough, we have a bunker pump which empties a bunker very quickly, but doesn't help on a Saturday morning.

With all of the wet weather last year, we have devised a plan to rebuild all of the bunkers that drain poorly over the next three years. They will be done in six lots, with two lots per year to spread the cost, workload and disruption to play. I will be surprised if a few more don't pop up in this time, but they will also be addressed as we work through them all.

As with the new bunkers, our new drainage works on the 3rd/2nd/1st had proven itself to be working very well, the area at the bottom of the hill on the 2nd has stayed dry and continued to be playable through all of the storms we have experienced so far. The final part of the works for this project is the area just short of the silt trap on the left hand side of the first hole. This has been G.U.R for quite some time as we stockpiled soil. This are has been a mess for a few years now, an inherited mess from the roadworks and subsequent drainage works carried out. We plan to fill this area and shape it so the water from inside the course can get to the silt trap quickly, and so the water on the roadside, stays on the road side. We plan to complete this area within the coming weeks.

Our fairway re-grassing will commence next week on the fifth hole, as you can all see from the difference between the left and right hand side, it is well worth the few weeks of inconvenience. The area on the right will be prepared and grassed by Tuesday and therefore the area will be G.U.R and roped off.

Back to bunkers, you all would have seen the top ups we carried out last month on many of the bunkers around the course, late this week, or early next week, we plan to continue with some more top ups. These bunkers are the ones that have very little sand in the base, but drain very well, obviously we will not be filling bunker that have drainage issues.

Happy Golfing

Stewart Poole