Update

General cutting of fairways, tees, approaches and greens which will continue daily throughout the summer. Height of cut on greens mower reduced to 4mm this week. This will drop again in the coming weeks.

Greens and and approaches fertilised at beginning of week and we are starting to see the benefits of this now with a healthier greener sward and some growth.

Greens rolled three times over the course of the week to improve putting surface.

Continued with bunker edging. Pictures show the improvement on the sleeper bunker at 10. All bunkers will be completed shortly.

General course set-up everyday, bunkers raked, tees markers moved, debris removed from greens/tees and holes changed 3 times.

New approaches at 7th and 11th cut and rolled. Both are knitting in well and will be top dressed and brushed as soon as is possible. These areas will be back in play as soon as they are ready, hopefully In the next few weeks.

After strong winds last week some of the newly planted trees had to be straightened and re-staked.

Trolley routes- white arrows painted around approaches are trolley routes and should be followed as much as possible. There have been a lot of trolley marks very close to the edges of greens and in some cases even on the greens, this is unacceptable. In one of the pictures u can see where trolleys have created scorch marks after been taken close to or on greens immediately after fertilising!

Job updates

Top dress all greens with light dressing and drag mat in. This will be done more over the coming weeks to help firm up and level out the greens.

Cut all longer fairways at height of 11mm. This was there first cut of the season and will be ongoing now til growth slows down at the end of the season.

Some of the longer areas of Semi-rough also had their first cut of season at a new height of 38mm. This has been reduced from the previous height of 45mm.

Tees/approaches cut with triple mower at height of 7mm. Greens cut with triple mower at height of 5mm. All cutting will become more frequent as the growth picks up over the next few weeks.

All greens sprayed with Chipco fungicide to prevent the spread of fusarium.

Start edging bunkers and shaping sand. All bunkers will be edge over the comin weeks.

General tidying up of course including blowing debris, emptying bins, cleaning round clubhouse and shoe cleaner.

Some of the newly turfed areas have been watered as the strong cold winds have dried it out.

Course update

Added gravel to base of the ditches at the 10th and 11th to level out and improve flow.

Cleared gorse at the left of 7th green and cut back the edge of the rhododendron bush at the 8th to improve line if sight to the green.

Continue digging out more tree stumps and roots from the right of the 7th fairway and 11th fairway. Also the big stump from the back of the 10th green from the tree that was cut down earlier in the winter has been removed. This proved to be more of a task than initially thought and required a bigger machine which we had to borrow from our neighbours at Gleneagles. This should help to improve the back edge of the green.

Continue with turfing works on patches throughout the course. The 18th is almost complete with just a small in the approach to be finished off. More turf due this week to continue areas at the 3rd/5th.

All greens cut at 5mm with pedestrian mowers once this week. Tees and approaches cut with triple mower at 7mm. Hopefully we will get more growth as soon as we get some heat then the height of cut will be reduced and the frequency of cutting increased.

Paths at 7th, 8th, 6/11 and 12th all blown to remove debris and tidy up.

All greens and approaches sprayed with phosphite, insecticide and iron.

Clean up vine which was over hanging the fence at the 8th beside the road. Strim remainder of gorse at 6th greenside, rake branches and debris on 13th fairway and all excess material burnt at fire site.

Turf the approach at 11th and tie in all edges and topdress. Clean up area and remove turfing boards. This area is now complete and will just need time to settle and knit in before it will be brought back into play. As with all newly turfed areas this will be ground under repair until further notice.

All divot mix boxes on each par 3 have been filled. We would like to encourage more golfers to start using these more often which will help to improve recovery on teeing surfaces.

All course furniture including tee signs, tee markers, fairway marker posts, bins and flag pins put back out onto course for the start of the new season.

As I'm sure you will be aware the toilets have returned to 9th tee and are plumbed in and back in use.

Special thanks to club captain Alan Watt who has spent time this week doing some divoting. This is very much appreciated as it can prove to be very a time consuming task for the greenstaff. Hopefully we will be able to get some volunteers to help out during the season.

Jobs update

Install new drainage pipe in front of ladies new tee at 6th. Included in this job was the installation of an open catchment channel 10 metres long which you can see in the pictures. This will collect water shedding off of the fairway onto the new tee.

Continue with gorse and scrub clearing on right hand side of sixth fairway.

Install extra stakes at new trees between 9/10 and 6/13 where wind was affecting them.

Dig out ditch at left of 11th fairway to help with drainage flow and bottom out with gravel to level base. Pictures included.

Dig out tree roots and stumps from 7th rough area that were causing problems with cutting. More roots and stumps will continue to be removed this week. Picture included.

Turf remaining area at the 7th approach side. This are us now complete and just needs some time to knit and root. Hopefully we get the weather to speed this process up which will allow us to get it back into play as quickly as possible.

Turf some patches on the 10th fairway which were worn out over the last season.

To finish the update, a recurring theme! Snow clearing around clubhouse and car park. Also salting pathways and icy areas.