Course Update Spring 2022
The golfing season is now well underway and we believe the course has come through another tough winter extremely well. We are back to pre-pandemic staffing levels with the arrivals of Jordan & John, both of which have settled in extremely well and are doing a fantastic job along with Nathan & Mark. Overall the course is in great shape, we just need mother nature to help out and give us a little bit of NIGHT TIME RAIN!
From a management perspective 2022 is going to be the biggest test compared to 2020 and 2021. Prices of all materials have skyrocketed, for example last year we could buy a bag of Urea (Nitrogen) for £12 and now the exact same bag is £44. This is across the board for everything in Greenkeeping, there is also a mass shortage of everything. Luckily we thought ahead and bulk purchased most of our products to avoid being left short. On the machinery side of things, we recently placed an order on two full electric Toro Greenmowers but they will not be available for a year. We like to be environmentally friendly here at RGC and this will really reduce our emissions. We are soon expecting delivery of a trailed leaf blower that will make a massive difference to clearing up after strong winds. The Greenkeeping team is very well supported by the owners and we have a machinery, fleet and facilities that most higher end golf courses would be envious of.
The greens are getting there we just need the night time temperatures to increase and then we will get some consistent growth and some rain, the irrigation is good but rain contains nitrates and that’s why grass greens up after rain. We overseeded the greens at the end of March and you would have noticed when it germinated as they looked like we hadn’t cut the greens but when grass germinates the grass blades roll flat and the mower doesn’t always cut them. They have now thickened up and the greens are performing well for the time of year. Our biggest issue at RGC is dealing with the large volume of foot traffic, our booking system shows that we had 41,000 rounds between March 2021-December 30th 2021. That’s a massive number of rounds considering our greens total area is 0.48 hectares (4800m2), an average golf course has 1 hectare (10,000m2) of greens and are only play once compared to RGC that gets played twice. This is the reason we increased the size of the 6th green last year and now this green arguably is our best green because we can spread the wear around more. Our weakest green is the 2nd, this is our smallest green by far and gets very little sunlight in the winter months. We plan to address this shade issue in the future with tree removal and lifting tree canopies. We have done the last bit of overseeding on this green, so it will be back to its best soon.
Enjoy your golf.
The Greenkeeping Team.
