Well, whilst the course meanders its way through the Summer our focus is now on Autumn renovation and further course improvements.

Next week we will begin scarifying fairways on the Abbotts, it will take about 3 days and will pull up substantial thatch and organic rubbish.  This will be followed by the blower and a further cut to clean them up after.  We will then spray selected fairways with Rescue, a product to remove unwanted coarse grasses, Rye and Yorkshire Fog principally.  Finally poor fairways will be overseeded  in early September.

The Priors greens are due to be Hollow-tined in the next 2 weeks.  Always a difficult process to try and balance against customer needs and course needs but this work is always undertaken to make long term progress on the course.  We will be tining up to 3 inches deep at  inch and a half centres.  The cores will be piled into a line behind the machine and removed by hand to ensure no heavy machinery is riding across the green and closing up the holes before the topdressing is applied.  Dressing will go down up to 2 tons a green with matting and brushing after to get the sand into the profile.  This is always a disruptive process but we will endeavour to get surfaces back in play as quickly as possible.

With summer holidays in full swing our neighbours have kindly started digging up Priors greens and removing markers from ponds.  Once we get back into September more markers and rakes will be put out but until then we will manage with what we have.

Also still to be started is drainage work on the 18th Abbotts and bunker work with new sand for some of the Abbotts bunkers.

16th green on the priors.
 Dry dense thatch in the top inch followed by a further inch on wetter spongy thatch below not good.