A Message from Nick

As you have all noticed, the fairways have suffered from this year’s hot, dry summer resulting in some areas with very little grass coverage. The recent wet weather and the impending acquisition of a new piece of equipment will all help to aid their recovery.

However, in an attempt to negate the need for a very costly over-seeding program and to stop the fairways becoming worse over the cold, wet winter months, a small task force, including myself, captains, vice-captains and directors looked at all the options open to us. These ranged from the introduction of fairway mats to doing nothing and everything in between.

We have settled on the following action:-

All golfers using a buggy or a trolley are to travel in the rough around the outside of the fairway to the side where their ball lays, park their trolley/buggy and walk 90 degrees to play their shot. In the first instance the exceptions to this rule will be those carrying their clubs or those with winter wheels or hedgehogs on their trolley.

**This however will be monitored so be aware that these exceptions could be rescinded at any point throughout the winter depending on conditions **

This action will come in to force on Monday 26th November – a timescale to enable those who wish to change their equipment three weeks to get sorted.

This action was agreed to be the least impactful of all the ideas put forward as all golfers will have a choice whether or not to purchase carry bags, hedgehogs or winter wheels or indeed stick to the 90 degree ruling. This action will impose no financial cost to the club, qualifiers can still be played when possible and the ball will still be played from position.

The reasoning behind the action is that golfing traffic per se, as opposed to the making of divots, will be the main problem to the damaged fairways this winter, so this is an attempt to minimize traffic over thin fairways which could turn muddy over time. A fairway divot party (or two) will be requested as we enter early spring next year in the hope of helping more recovery.

I hope everyone will, in the interests of caring for the fairways, adhere to this action because it is being brought in to help keep the course open more over the winter and to ensure we have decent surfaces for next season.

Many thanks in advance for helping us to look after your course.

Nick Meehan
Course manager.