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Tee To Green September

24th September 2024

Find out the latest from our Greenkeepers in this month's Tee to Green.

The Downs Course

Firstly, I will mention the greens. Although the performance is still consistent, we have had an outbreak of a few diseases on the greens. Firstly, we have had a bit of anthracnose attack a few greens, mainly, 4,8,10 and 16. This was treated with a fungicide and a foliar feed of nitrogen to recover the areas. Also, we had rather large attack of Fusarium at the beginning of the month and this was on pretty much every green. This was mainly due to high humidity, heavy dews and inconsistent weather, where the disease popped up and we couldn’t spray for 4 days due to the heavy down pours we experienced during them day. If we spray a fungicide, it normally takes a good 6 hours to absorb into the plant, and applying this in wet weather would be a waste of time and money as it would just wash off with no beneficial action by the plant. These diseases have now been recovered and turf looks healthy again. We have also had a massive hit of disease on some of the tees and the 18^th fairway. This has taken out most of the fescue grasses. We have applied a strong growth fertiliser to all these areas, plus overseeded and top dressed the 18^th fairway. We have also applied a liquid feed to aid in the recovery, which seems to be working.

We have had some issues with flooding and bunker wash down due to the excessive rain. This has yet again contaminated the bunkers with chalk and compacted down the sand. Again, it is taking us longer to deal with this issue, as grass growth is still high and we are still continually cutting the playing surfaces more frequently than normal. We will start moving sand again and hope the weather plays ball.

The long rough is due to be cut by the farm team at the beginning of October. We have had to wait for the delivery of their new machine and hopefully it won’t take that much time to get the main areas cut and collected. This is the first time they will be doing this, so hopefully it works well and we can do it again in the spring as well to improve playability of these natural areas.

Forestry have been removing some of the dead trees in a few of the copse areas behind and also to the right of the 8^th green, eft side of 13^th hole and left side of the 16^th hole / gazebo area. These are mainly ash trees and the wood will be taken away in due course to be used in the estates biomass boiler as part of the sustainability program.

Rob Dyer, Head Greenkeeper, The Downs Course

The Park Course

Another settled month weather wise, although not very good for our last event for the Estate this year, The Revival. Very good for the course though, fairways have come back strong and all areas damaged from Festival of Speed have now fully recovered.

We have also seen increased disease pressure with warm nights, heavy dew mornings, everything Fusarium (most common turf disease on golf greens) loves. It showed its ugly face (orange patches) just as it rained for 4 days straight, so we could not get the sprayer out until forecast was dry. Once fungicide went down it checked the disease, just in the nick of time, as we had major maintenance on the greens only a week away.

For greens maintenance we had ideal weather for the 2 days. We know we had the greens in great condition going into it and members always ask why we do it when there good? The reason why they are consistently good is because of essential maintenance and at right time!

September is good month for maintenance where we should have good recovery with temps still warm and odd shower or two. We welcomed back our good friend, Mark Kerr, and his GKB machine. It is the 3^rd year running we have done this and we keep seeing massive improvements with the greens. We use 3mm blades at a 25mm depth which remove thatch and then fills with kiln dried sand. We approximately used 14 tonnes of sand then applied another 10 tons to get smooth finish. Greens were also verti-drained to 200mm depth before GKB. A foliar is sprayed after to aid recovery. We have already seen good recovery only after a week so we will be in good shape going into Autumn/Winter.

It is essential as said before we do this to improve the greens for next season and onwards. At the same time we also vert-drained the tees to relieve compaction after long summer of play.

The most complaints the team hear is about our natural areas, long rough. You will be pleased to know we will be cutting this down now. We cannot touch these areas during summer due to nesting birds and wild life. These areas have become thick and dense this year with unsettled weather, it may take longer to cut. Please be patient while tractor is out there, slow process, loud and a big machine to turn around. On plus side lots of lost golf balls to be found!

The Copse will be having a maintenance and hair cut as well. We have already done some test patches on long rough on some mounds with our much smaller cut and collect machine. We will complete this at the end of the month while doing greens maintenance. We will be doing a 13mm hollow core and then sand dress to fill the holes.

At the beginning of the month, we had The Junior Open and the Sussex Open 3 days on the bounce. Again, we are thankful to the team for coming in on the weekend to help prepare the course and for their hard work getting it into the best possible condition. The green was slightly slower than for Club Championship but weather was not on our side with rain both days but still quick and true.

As we head into Autumn/Winter we look back on a hugely successful season for the team, from Clutch Tour, Goodwoof to the Club Championship/Junior Open/Sussex Open with the Festival of Speed thrown in to the equation; plus not forgetting the opening of The Copse. Huge thanks to them and thanks for all the positive feedback from you, really motivates the team going forward.

See you on the course.

Scott Peterson, Deputy Head Greenkeeper, The Park Course