Greens Newsletter As you are possibly aware, we started our winter work programme last week with repairs to the poor surfaces around the first green and the damaged area to the exit from the greens sheds onto the fifth. The following is a summary of the rest of our planned work for the remainder of 2017. Week commencing 23/10/2017 Area around 11th & 8th Greens and 12th & 9th tees - work has begun to clear and tidy the unkempt area between the 8th & 11th greens, between the approach to 11th green & the path to the 9th tee (formerly known as a “conservation area”) and along the path from the 8th green past the back of the 12th tees to the 9th tee. I hope this identifies the area in question! The whole of this area will be scraped off, graded and seeded seed/mow and keep tidy in the coming years. It is likely that we shall have different mowing patterns/heights to enhance presentation. Once complete we shall need to re-define the pathway from the 8th green to the 9th tee as the adopted route has created an ugly mud path across the back of the 8th red teeing ground. We have removed several trees from this area, most of which have no place on a golf course. We shall replace these with appropriate trees such as Rowan, Field Maple, Whitebeam or similar. 9th Tee – work will begin on extending the 9th tee – we shall extend the teeing area backwards by about 3m. I believe that there is some concern that we are proposing to lengthen the 9th by extending the tee - the length of the hole will not alter, the work will enable us to improve and increase the teeing area on this, presently very poor surface as the tees mower will drive on and off the newly reduced gradient at the rear of the tee. Week commencing 6/11/2017 or sooner depending on progress with the above. Drain 9th pond (next week), excavate all water soldier, debris (and golf balls) down to clay base. Re-shape pond, create vegetation shelf and grade all around pond to allow mowing closer to perimeter. Re-stock with appropriate pond plants. What else is going on? The “sub-tropical” weather conditions last week mean that we shall need to keep mowing grass for the time being and I do appreciate that some of the rough is longer than we would like. We have been cutting the rough, but there are several areas where it has been too wet to get the mowers onto it. You will no doubt have noticed the wheel damage caused to a few areas where we have tried to mow. Although we have had considerable recent rainfall it is a little drier now and we are able to cut some additional areas of rough. We staked off many of the greens complex areas a little earlier this year owing to the poor weather conditions. Thank you to all for observing the “no go trolley” areas – it really does help with their recovery come spring. Your views on any or all of the above are welcome – please contact me via email to rod.backhouse@sky.com. | 
