January 2026

Good afternoon and welcome to the first course update for 2026. On behalf of the course staff, we hope everyone enjoyed their festive season and we wish all our members and guest a fantastic New Year with low scores, pots of gold but most importantly good health.

We have been in a never-ending cycle of screaming Easterly winds and Afternoon SWesterly Blusters making a mess of the course, debris removal from playing areas prior to maintenance and play a constant rinse and repeat with no sooner clearing than being back to square one, a very frustrating period for staff, so my thanks to them for their patience and persistence. It’s a task that is required to be completed before mowing and maintenance in order to ensure no damage is caused to expensive cutting units from unseen honkey nuts, sticks and spikes, in case of the bunkers which need to be clear so the rake doesn’t gauge the sand, to clearing turf area before any product applications not to mention for aesthetics, but there is only so much you can do, the staff are doing their best specially through periods of high winds, of which also impact sprinkler uniformity requiring time to manual water and hand water areas.  Fun Times!!! 

Prior to Xmas we mini tined the greens to vent air and improve water penetration, this was followed with applications of wetters and organic liquids to assist the greens through the higher temperatures we experienced through this period. The process will be repeated Monday 19th January after the Police Legacy has been run and won.  As per other times only no major surface disruption will be evident. 

On the topic of greens there is a lot happening out there, as mentioned last update we are controlling saltine ongoing through summer along with crab grass while also targeting Poa annua in an effort to reduce its % while increasing the competitiveness of the bent. It s a fine line we are walking but we are on the correct side if it, using controlled stress to achieve our objective. This does mean some greens look a little unthrifty and stressed, basically the Poa collapsing under the stress being applied however it is encouraging to see bent grass shoots popping up those areas.  As mentioned, our aim is to achieve a greater % of Bent to Poa without effecting ball roll. To date we are managing that fine balance.  We have had a disease impact our plans, mainly over the top of the Poa so not entirely a bad thing, however we don’t want to push it to much that bare areas develop, so we will be backing off our controlled approach  to allow the greens some breathing space till after the  Ladies Summer Cup (Feb 7 & 8 )  before ramping it back up int time for Greens Renovations (March 9&10).  

Over the next few weeks our focus will be on presenting the course for the Summer Cup, our base work for this event is complete, we now have the finer tasks to attend in the lead up, bunker edging, tee box tidying etc. With the above wind, enough to keep us busy and out of trouble for the next few weeks!! 

Till Next time 

Happy Hooking 


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