Greetings golfers,

Welcome to another exciting edition of the weekly newsletter bringing you all of the latest goings-on at the club. 

Saturday turned out to be a bad day for many reasons the first the St Andrews meeting being abandoned with the rain. Secondly Liverpool getting hammered 5-0 at Manchester City.

Thirdly as many of you know Caroline was away in Slovakia last week playing for England in the European Team Championships. England qualified first in the Strokeplay  side of the competition to make it into the top eight countries.

In the quarter final which turns to matchplay England played Spain where there is one foursome match and four singles Caroline played in the foursomes winning her match and England won 4-1. In the Semi Final England won 4-1 again with Caroline winning her match again. In the final against France although Caroline won her match again England lost 3 1/2 to 1 1/2  meaning she now has 3 Silver medals!!!

Upcoming events

The St Andrews Meeting will now be played on Saturday September 30th. Tee times will not be carried forward so please book your tee times as normal when booking becomes available on Friday at 9.00 pm. As many of you know already I have transferred last weeks entrance fees to this weekends or next weekends competitions.

It is also that time of year when we are now taking entries for the Winter League which is again £15 per couple. Please drop the money into the Pros Shop as normal.

Ladies competition news

The Ladies Pink Day competition on Tuesday was won by Pam Mitchell with 34 points followed by Amanda Dixon with 31 points.

I have added Rod’s latest newsletter below for you too read and please take notice of the bit on Pitchmarks we have had a lot of complaints recently and with the wet weather the greens are a lot softer meaning any ball landing on the green unless its a pitch & run will make an indentation.

Greens Newsletter

I have to start with a comment about the atrocious weather we have endured this summer and it’s getting worse as I type this!

It’s not that it has been bad all the time, but the pattern has been very difficult to manage. Every week is punctuated with some sunny days followed by wet days and even wet & sun in the same day. This makes it difficult to perform the jobs we need to do and to get a dry cut on the grass across the course. I have already mentioned the problems it has caused with the bunkers and it doesn’t look as though it’s about to improve!

We were scheduled to micro tine and top-dress the greens starting today, however the weather is poor and we cannot put down wet top-dressing. So, we shall wait until the first week in October when we plan to hollow tine with 10mm  tines, top-dress and over-seed. Weather permitting of course.

The following was supposed to have been included in last week’s newsletter, however the damage to the 5th & 6th greens made the piece somewhat difficult to include.

Many members of Bromborough Golf Club should be ashamed of themselves!

Why? Next time you play, just take a look at the greens and you will see many little brown circles the size of a pitch mark. That is exactly what they are. The photograph of the 10th green (below left) gives some idea of the problem, but doesn’t show the problem as vividly as it appears “live”. They spoil the appearance of the greens, affect the roll of the ball and most annoyingly, they don’t need to be there.

The picture below is an unrepaired pitch mark on the 5th green – hardly difficult to see!

Repair your pitchmarks - It's not difficult!

And before you all throw up your arms in protest and tell me that it’s visitors, well it is not just visitors because there are more unrepaired pitch marks than visitors.

In amongst all of this I must thank those of you who I know repair their own pitch marks and several other pitch marks when playing. Without this help the problem would be much worse.

How do we resolve this problem? There are no enforceable sanctions I can think of, other than to name and shame individuals, but I am not sure how I can identify the offenders without sitting beside a green and taking names. As far as visitors, societies & guests are concerned, I shall ask the Professional to reinforce the message when visitors etc. come into the Professional’s shop. As for our members, well it’s really hoping that you take notice of this plea to help me with this matter.

Tuesday morning:

We can cut only selectively this week because we would do more harm than good if we try to get the mowers on some parts of the course. Tomorrow’s weather looks dreadful, but if it improves on Thursday & Friday, we shall do as much cutting as time allows. Jason plans to rotorake the bunkers as soon as they are dry enough (don’t hold your breath). We plan to star slit the greens complexes this week, but once again it will depend on weather conditions. As always, we shall do what we can to present the course as well as we possibly can.

I am hoping that the usual September weather returns soon to help us prepare the course as we move into the autumn & winter months. It could be much worse of course – just look at the Caribbean!