08/06/2025
Hi Golfers
Thought i'd give you a bit of a course update...
To say it's been a tough year is an understatement. With 2024 being one of the wettest years on record followed by the driest spring in 60 years things are taking time to recover.
The rain we've had this past week may not be great for the sunseekers out there but for us has been a God send.
So many courses suffered with disease in the latter part of the winter and Downshire was no exception. We had our worst Fusarium patch outbreak for 7 years, and although our greens are healthier than they've ever been the impact was quite severe.
As promised last month, the recovery has been reasonably quick although without rain it's not been as quick as I would have liked. All the greens have been scarified, treated, top dressed twice and spot dressed to aid the recovery. When cutting grass as low as we do on the greens the biggest aim is to not stress the grass out, which is why they've been running slower than usual. However blades were lowered today which should start adding pace to the greens once the Poa seeding starts to slow down.
Golfers also need to be doing their bit in repairing pitch marks as a dried out pitch mark will take weeks to repair... challenge your playing partners if they're not repairing theirs.
With the throughput of golfers we have, we do need to protect our greens somewhat before optimum growth is achieved. Failure to do this can lead to the greens becoming stressed and then in turn they can become hydrophobic, where the ground actually repels water.
We can manage greens and aprons through our irrigation system but this isn't the case with the fairways and without a significant amount of rain golfers need to be aware of the extra roll and bounce they're going to get especially when playing long shots.
For those who haven't played for some time we carried out extensive woodland management this year primarily along the 4th fairway and the 5th tee. The new ditch on 13 has caught out a number of players that weren't aware but a number of golfers have fed back that it's a great new feature to the hole and it's been highly beneficial to draining the lower part of the 13th.
The 8th bunker has finally been repaired! Sorry for the long delay with this but we need to focus on things that could possibly shut the course, although i could name a few golfers that liked it being GUR. It was one of our golfers who made the suggestion about using sandbags for the repair that seemed to work... it took 30 of them. A new drain was also installed in the bunker so only time will tell if it's a success.
You may have noticed we've had a couple of robot demos for fairway cutting. the demos have gone very well and we've had interest from our stakeholders in taking this further.
On the topic of robots... By next week we will have two robots collecting balls and mowing the driving range. This has been a significant investment and will help to improve the out field, reduce our carbon footprint, plus the boys are fed up with you aiming at them. 😉
Small things. New flags are on order, bunker rakes replaced and we've put out new 150yrd markers on the fairways. Please remember that they are measured to the middle of the greens.
Lastly i noticed a few ladies in the restaurant this week with bits of paper, calculators and asking to phone a friend 🧐 when trying to work out hcp allowances for a greensomes match they had. All you need to do for course information and the majority of all hcp allowances in most formats is to scan the QR code that are on our scorecards and on the walls by the club boards and in the bar.
Happy Golfing.
