Tee To Green May

The Downs Course

The UK is experiencing its driest spring since the Second World War – and the impact is unsurprisingly being felt at every single golf course. Look out of your window and what do you see? Most likely, bright sunshine and blue skies, which is heaven for sunseekers but a problem for anyone who manages turf. To say we’ve experienced some weather extremes over the past couple of years is an understatement.

April 2024 was one of the wettest in nearly two centuries. Fast forward 12 months and, according to the Met Office, the UK recorded just over half the average rainfall it would expect to see in a normal month. That has been a trend in 2025. Following two of the wettest winters the UK has seen in decades, surely a period of sun would be beneficial. But we’ve gone from worm casts and mud to cold dry mornings, sun shear and not a hint of precipitation. Turf just can’t recover. We’re essentially no better off than we were at the peak of winter, despite it being drier. We have seen the early onset of turfgrass stress, especially with Poa annua being stunted, coming into the seasonal emergence of seed heads in mid-May.

These combined stresses have made it difficult for us managing the transition through spring and seeking surface refinement for main season performance. The fluctuation in unpredictable and extreme climatic conditions appears to be a seasonal norm.

We will look to verti-cut the greens in the upcoming weeks to improve the trueness and greens speed, to create a more consistent putting surface. This will be helped with the continuous sand dusting programs. We have also been doing lots of hand watering on the dry areas of the greens and aim to push this out onto the aprons to improve the greens complex. Water has been an issue around holes 11 to 15 with an electrical fault knocking out that zone, therefore we could not water at night and had to water the greens, tees and aprons during the morning set-up, which was not ideal from a playability perspective or an agronomy one too. However, this has now been fixed and we have gone back to normal watering. The irrigation certainly is pushing us to the limits this year, luckily, we start work on the new system at the end of September, meaning next year we should have a lot more resource hours to put into detailing the course.

Due to the lack of rainfall, nature has hit us hard on the fairways this year, with some of the shockwave slits opening, forming cracks. Unfortunately, there is not a lot we can do about this, as we need the rain to fall to start bringing these back. When the rain is predicated, we will apply a wetting agent and seaweed spray to assist in the aid of recovery.

The natural rough has started to grow taller now, this is slightly less thick than other years, due to the dry weather and the additional cut and collect which took place in late March. With the prolonged lack of rainfall this should stay thinner and wispier until we get some moisture back in. So, there are some positives of this weather.

The 5^th tee is now back in play and markers will be slightly tighter on this hole (amongst some others throughout the course) to help with wear and tear on the tees. Thank you for your patience with this area, as it took longer to establish than expected.

There has been lots of sightings of hares, buzzards, deer this last month, which is pleasing to see. The ecology around the site is very diverse, with lots of transition areas blending the landscape nicely between golf and nature. We have also had some Orchids come through in the natural rough on the 14^th and oxeye daisy’s coming through on the tunnel area.

See you on the course.

Rob Dyer, Head Greenkeeper, The Downs Course

The Park Course

This Spring has been beautiful, sunny, warm most days and still a strong northerly wind which can feel cold at times, certainly in the morning. With this has also come with a lack of any serious rain. Currently, this is the 5^th driest Spring on record and could quite well end up the driest. The driest Spring on record was 1976 and most of you would of heard about the Summer of 76, hottest on record. All this is very challenging times for every golf course up and down the country.

The course is now looking like it does in July/August. Greens have recovered very well from maintenance from last month. These have just recently been fed with a granular fertiliser to get more consistent growth and we will start doing more top dressing. We are a little bit behind in dressing due to fact of the construction work on the bunkers and Copse maintenance. They are still performing well and speeds are up there but just not quite were we want them to be. Tees/aprons are struggling in this dry period. We are watering daily in the evenings just trying to keep them healthy. The fairways are starting to drop off a bit as well. In the pictures below is the 7^th fairway same time last year and a pic from this year, quite the contrast.

All the new bunkers have been turfed. All of them have knitted in really well seeing how dry it’s been and thanks again for your patience with all the hoses out there. The next step which is happening right now is that the bases are being put in. This is a strong fescue turf which is laid upside down for the base then we will add the sand. We will give this a week or so to settle down before opening. Ideally we like to open 4^th tee and bunkers at same time. The 4^th tee is coming along nicely, heights have now been dropped and feed applied and then we will top dress. The surrounding area is also now being cut with same machine that does the main tees.

The Copse

The Copse greens had maintenance this month. Due to age of greens and grow in process these naturally get high levels of thatch due to the amount of water and feed that is applied to get them to where they are now. We used 13mm hollow core tines then dressed with 2 ton of sand on Putting/Chipping green. The 6 Copse greens had slightly less dressing. This was then drag matted into the holes and profile followed by a granular fertiliser. One week later they are nearly fully recovered. In September we will use the GKB machine to remove more thatch and get them to a manageable level like The Park greens. Overall the Copse is presenting well in these challenging conditions and has continued to be busy, especially weekends with family’s now using the facility which is pleasing to see.

See you on the course.

Scott Peterson, Head Greenkeeper, The Park Course