Competition round up

Despite a slightly smaller entry than normal the Club Foursomes Qualifier on Saturday still produced some excellent scoring. Father and son duo George and Dale Heggarty led the qualifiers with a great score of 90 - 9.5 - 70.5. George said he had to go home for a rest after carrying Dale all the way round!

In 2nd place Rod Backhouse and Will Glew shot 83 - 11 - 72 to pip another father and son duo Mike & Jacob McLouhglin into 3rd with 82 - 9 - 73. The leading 32 pairs qualify for the knockout stage with the cut coming after a card playoff on nett 81.

There were 5 twos plus congratulations to Dave Sheppard on his hole in one on the 16th for a double share which worked out at £18.80 per two or £9.90 per player.

The Ladies had there Spring Meeting on Tuesday which probably should have been called the Winter Meeting as it was so cold in the wind. Scoring was very tough with Jan McGowan winning Div 1 with 89-9-90 followed by Jan Beacall 101=20=81 beating Dawn Skelland on a card playoff.

Div 2 was won by Enid Roberts with 105 - 25 - 80 with Amanda Martlew in 2nd place with 106 - 25 - 81. The best score of the day was by Sheila Nugent who won Div 3 with 112 - 36 - 76 followed by Karen Munro with 110 - 33 - 77.


 

Ladies coaching

After last years successful Get into Golf Ladies Classes I will be starting another course on Sunday 14 May at 11.30am. So if you know any Ladies interested in taking up the game or your Wife or Daughter is interested please contact me in the shop on 01513344499 or email me at geoff.berry@foremostgolf.com  

We are also starting some Junior Coaching classes at half price the last one of these is this Sunday at 9.30am for £2.50. We will then be running classes on a Wednesday at 4.30pm after school for 5 weeks at £25 for the 5 weeks. Once again please contact myself or Alex if you know anyone interested in the shop or email Alex at alexevans25@hotmail.co.uk 


 

Adidas shoe Trade In

Thanks to those of you who took advantage of the free dozen of Pro V1'S with the recent promotion. This is the last week of the Shoe Trade in promotion so if you wish to take advantage of up to £20 off a new pair of shoes please do it this week.

 

Pay Play and Stay - 2017

Following the trial in 2016, the On-line booking system** will continue to be in operation for the 2017 Pay, Play and Stay competitions.

**Online booking system refers to the BRS link on the club website

A couple of minor modifications have been made, so please familiarise yourself with the rules below.

- The start sheet will be available via the Online Booking System from 9pm on the Wednesday 15 days prior to the competition. This is relevant only for Prime Time tee times.

- Prime Times are considered to be those between 2:30pm and 5:30pm

- Online bookings for Prime Times will remain available until 1pm on the Monday preceding the competition.

- All entry fees for PRIME TIME bookings MUST be paid by the cut off time of 1pm on the Monday preceding the competition.

- Failure to pay before the cut off time will result in all unpaid bookings being removed from the Online Booking system and those time slots will then become available for others to book.

- After 1pm on the Monday of the week in which the PPS is played, you will only be able to make bookings via the professional shop. Payment at time of booking will be necessary.

For information, you can play in a PPS at anytime on the day. Tee times outside of the Prime Times will be available to book as normal (ie midnight two weeks in advance) and entry fees for these times can be paid on the day of the Competition before commencement of play.

There will be NO refunds of entry fees booked during Prime Time after 1pm on the Monday preceding the competition, unless in the case of exceptional personal circumstances or the event is cancelled due to outside influences.

R.Hazlewood
Chairman Handicaps and Competitions


 

Bromborough Golf Club Greens Newsletter
W/C 24th April 2017

Good morning all First of all, I must thank the fourteen volunteers who joined me last Wednesday to fill hundreds of divots on our golf course. The volunteers were: Karen Munro, Denis Munro, Jeff Ollerhead, Terry Keenan, John Parry, Richard Barzu, Steve O'Loughlin, Dave Holmes, Joe Graham, Steve Watson, Roger Skinner, Ray Maddaford, Peter Johnson and Steve Donoghue. The divot repairing after the winter (I'm not sure that winter is actually over!) is a very important job and without these volunteers the fairways would remain scarred for much of the spring and summer.

So once again I should like to express my sincere thanks to you all, on behalf of the greens staff and of course the rest of the members of BGC. It is particularly appreciated this year as Easter has meant that we have two "short" weeks and this means that the greens staff are hard pushed anyway. Moving on to other matters, we appear to have caused some confusion with placing the new yellow discs in the fairway. They are the tee markers for the new "short course" replacing the red wooden logs which were put out on a temporary basis. We have ordered logos and "Short Course" to be added to the discs in the next few weeks.

This week we welcome Alistair Beggs for the STRI Agronomy visit - this includes checking the levels of organic matter in the greens turf, greens speed, firmness, moisture content and reviewing our aeration, top-dressing and fertiliser applications. Talking of Alistair Beggs, I came across the following from "Fine Golf Newsletter". I appreciate that we are well down this road with our greens, nevertheless, I thought you might find it of interest anyway. The reasons for moving away from annual meadow (weed) grass (poa annua) to (in our case) brown top bent grass.

"Following a couple of misrepresentations of Fine Golf over the past year, it may be worthwhile reiterating Fine Golf's mission, which is to focus on the enjoyment of playing on all-year-round firm, fast running surfaces, in contrast to soft 'target-golf '. As this depends to a large extent on the grasses so Fine Golf promotes Jim Arthur's ideas on greenkeeping, which are all about the battle against shallow-rooted, annual meadow 'weed' grass (Poa annua) whether that is inland or by the sea.

It is not our wish to be rude about those who love 'target-golf ', indeed one recognises the vast majority of golf is now played on well fertilised, lush, 'target-golf ' courses and all GB&I courses are on a spectrum with the Muirfields and Castle Stuarts at one end and the Belfrys and Celtic Manors at the other. 2 Nevertheless, all the finest greenkeepers know, as Alistair Beggs (one of the UK's leading agronomists, put it so clearly at Fine Golf's inaugural 'Running-Golf Day' (Click to see YouTube video at 3.40 minutes in): "There is a polarisation in the greenkeeping industry and ('fine') fescue/bent turf performs better than ('weed') Poa annua grass". If most golfers ideally prefer 'firmness, trueness and sustainability(low inputs and lower costs)' then it is not 'hysterical' for Fine Golf to say to golfers "support your home course greenkeeper on the path of encouraging fine grasses as the high performance standard for the future. The classic values in golf are important to defend".

On course work this week includes; Tee maintenance, fertiliser to greens complexes and several weak areas around the course, level the soil piles behind ninth tee, top-up all drainage channels, strimming around trees (four day's work), establish level route from sixth green to seventh tee. Cutting the course out will begin again on Wednesday (with the forecast I don't think the grass will grow very quickly this week!). UP-DATE I have just spoken with Jason (Monday morning 09.25) - greens staff have completed solid tining of nine tees and will complete all tees by end of day. They will be top-dressed and brushed but with the damp conditions we are experiencing this morning they will be black and soily - this will last for only a few days. We need to go through this "pain" to present our tees to a good standard - thank you for your tolerance. Although the course is now showing some detail from the mowing, the greens are way behind and desperately need some warm rain to bring them on. I shall let you have the STRI views next week.

Rod Backhouse - Greens Chairman