Course Manager's Diary

October has been a very busy month for our team with a lot of turf refinement and aeration work being carried out over all main playing areas of the course. This is a very important time of the season for us to try and strengthen conditions on the course before we hit the depths of the winter months.

Throughout October we have seen very mild conditions which means we are seeing a fair amount of growth across the course which is great for the recovery from the recent maintenance programme, but it also means regular cutting practices are still ongoing. We are also currently battling the leaves at this time of year, so we are blowing on a daily basis. Sadly, our tractor mounted blower is off the road at the moment, this is our only large-scale piece of equipment for leaf control, so it’s been hard work without it. We are hopeful it will be repaired soon although the replacement part required is taking some time to arrive. Massive thanks to Greentech for allowing us to borrow their tractor mounted blower in the meantime.

Maintenance stage 1
The first stage of our Autumn maintenance work was scarifying all greens, aprons and tees. Scarifying units were set at a depth of 12mm below the surface, breaking through and removing organic matter from our main playing areas. All waste material was blown in to piles, as can be seen in the pictures, and removed to leave a clean surface ready for sand application.
Greens were dressed with 10 tonnes of sand and worked in to the scarifying lines to help eat into that organic matter layer.

Tees and aprons were also sand dressed to improve playability and turf health.

All scarifying and dressing was completed over a period of two weeks which was brilliant as it’s a very time-consuming task with a lot of mess made in the process.

Maintenance stage 2
The second stage of maintenance was coring the greens. These cores were around 1.5-inch long at 1.5-inch spacings.

All cores this year have been re-used on what will be our new putting green. This will create a small thatch layer which will aid with quick establishment of the new green. Although the new practice green will be seeded, as the cores grow through and establish it will create a more consistent surface to replicate the greens we find out on the course.

After green coring was complete, we applied another 20 tonnes of sand to fill the core holes as much as possible. This sand was worked in first using a drag mat. Afterwards, when the sand was dry, we went on to brush the sand in to the holes.

Stage two of our tees and aprons maintenance was to solid tine them with a 15mm solid tine. They were then dragmatted to work the sand into the holes.

Maintenance stage 3
The 3rd stage of maintenance to the greens was a deep verti-drain to around 9 inches with a 13mm solid tine followed by another dressing over the greens (15 tonnes). This creates airspace deep into the surfaces which will have many long-term benefits; better drainage, root structure and all-round better plant health just to name a few.

Tees have been deep verti-drained to around 7inch.

Maintenance stage 4
All greens were overseeded with a blend of straight bents grass to help continue to improve the quality of the grasses in our greens. Over time this will give our greens a better tolerance to turf diseases, better playability and ball roll which is what we aim to keep improving.

After overseeding was complete we moved on to applying our last granular feed of the year. The greens are responding very well to the 4-4-20 feed applied.

Maintenance stage 5
We have recently carried out Verti-draining of our fairways with a 20mm tine at a depth of 6-inch with a 6-inch spacing. This work will improve soil porosity, allowing air flow and moisture to work through the profile.

We have recently had a demo of the John deere 5075e and we felt it would be best to put it to the test while verti-draining our fairways.
We have also had a demo of an Iseki 6507 which we used while verti-draining tees.

Winter Rules
As of Monday 4th November, we have now moved to Winter Rules and a revised course layout for this winter. We politely remind all members that fairway mats are now mandatory, and we ask those playing social golf to also use them in the first cut of rough to aid with course protection. Members will also note extensive roped off areas this winter for the purposes of course protection with the aim of ensuring the best quality of course we can come the spring.

August started off with a decent spell of weather although changed very quickly back to typical Scottish weather. Large amounts of rainfall and very muggy misty days saw disease pressure go through the roof which forced us to apply a fungicide application on to our greens to minimise the damage. Thankfully this has reduced the spread of the fusarium and it is now recovering well.

As we approach the autumn/winter months we have started preparing our temporary greens to get them in the best possible condition should they be required. With our greens being free draining we don’t expect the temporary greens to be in play very often, although they will be in play whenever we have frost. We will feed, solid tine and dress all temporary greens to give the best possible temporary greens throughout the winter months.

Our main focus this winter will be course protection with plans to increase the roped off areas. Some tees will also be moved slightly to help ease the pressure on heavy traffic areas which struggle to recover every year through the playing season. Come next season we aim to see a dramatic difference in the quality of these areas. We also plan to carry out aeriation on some of the larger areas of the course to help playability (tees, aprons, fairways and walkways) which will allow areas to be more free draining and keep the course open as much as we possibly can.

Our team have had a long hard summer and have put in a tremendous amount of effort to present the course in great condition on a consistent basis. The team have been using their annual leave over the last few weeks and this will continue up until the end of the year. This means we will be running most days with 4/5 staff compared to our full staff of 6. We will also have 3 of our apprentice’s returning to Gosta training to start/continue their education which is day release every week from now until around March/April time.

Greens maintenance

At the start of August we carried out some essential maintenance to our greens:

• Verti-drained with a solid tine
• Rolled
• Sand dressed (5 tonnes)
• Worked in with drag mat
• Rolled greens to improve ball roll and minimise disruption
• Organic granular feed applied to help aid recovery

The greens recovered very well from this process and our next maintenance will be coming up at the end of September/start of October, although specific timing will be coordinated with the 28th green contractor, Greentech, as they require cores to build the new 18th putting green.

Thank you to all Members for always being very supportive of the course and the processes we go through to try and produce healthy putting surfaces for you to play on all year round.

18th Hole Redevelopment

Greentech started the redevelopment of our 18th hole on Wednesday 11th September.

Their first area of focus has been to strip the turf from the current fairway area and use this material as infill for the left-hand side to create a wider landing area. At time of writing 4 days effort has been completed, in good conditions with no rain, so we have got off to a great start. The majority of the turf has been removed and Greentech are now working on dropping the level of the fairway.

Holes 12a and 12b are now in play and will remain in-play until the new 18th hole is open for play at the start of next season.

The practice fairway area is now closed.

The chipping green will remain in use until work starts at the new 18th green and putting green area.

As much as this is an exciting time for everyone, please be mindful to stay away from working equipment and don’t enter the proximity of the working area as the Greentech staff need time and free space to work efficiently and safely. It’s now a working site and it shouldn’t be entered as it’s not safe to do so.
Blue stakes have now been put in place up the left of the 16th hole. Should your ball cross the line of stakes, please take free relief from the area.

July has been a very busy month for our team as always with a busy fixture list to prepare the course for; club competitions, majors, opens and this year the Lothians Amateur Championship. Thanks to the effort from our team, these events have all been a real success, and the feedback received on the course has exceeded all expectations.

Along with all the competitions we have been carrying out routine and essential maintenance to our greens. We’ve been delighted with the greens this summer, but we strive for continual improvement in standard, and this maintenance plays a key part of that. From time to time this will cause some disruption although it will be short lived and for the benefit of our greens in the long term.

Greens Maintenance
After having a very busy period and entering a period when disease pressure is typically high, we undertook important scheduled maintenance on Monday 5th August.

We are currently going through a period of high disease pressure with damp humid conditions and very little air movement. This brought on an outbreak of anthracnose, although it is very common at this time of year for anthracnose to make an appearance.

The greens were solid tined followed by a light dressing enabling airflow and forcing moisture to move off the top surface. Several other steps have also been taken to reduce stress on our surfaces:
• Reduced cutting frequency on greens
• Height of cut increased
• Bio stimulants applied and increased nitrogen levels to help relieve stress
• Managing moisture differently when applying water to minimise the leaf sitting damp over night
• Greens have been sarrel rolled to allow air in to the top surface
• Spiking and overseeded worst affected areas
• Scheduled maintenance (5th of August) to allow air flow into the surfaces
• Organic granular feed will be applied after maintenance to help recovery and increase nitrogen levels

Lothians Amateur Championship
Hosting this year’s Lothians Amateur Championship was a fantastic opportunity for the Club to show the wider Lothians what the club as a whole strive to produce. Apart from a few minor breakdowns all went very much to plan with our greens running at just under 11 on the stimpmeter, although more importantly they were running smooth, true and consistent which is exactly what we work hard to produce. The feedback we received was exceptional from players, spectators and also fellow greenkeepers who were playing in the event.

Feedback we received over the week
• “Truest greens I have putted on”
• “Best condition course I have played on all year”
• “I must say the course was in magnificent condition and doubt if there is anywhere better. They should get themselves on the Lothians circuit as without doubt one of the best”
• “Course was outstanding all week long. Genuinely not a single bad word about the place which is incredible”
• “I would just like to make a complaint about the condition of the greens….. how can they be that good?!”

This is just some of the feedback we received which was fantastic to hear and greatly appreciated from all our team. The team worked long days with very early mornings to set the course up to the standard we aim for and this feedback shows it was well worth it. Huge thanks to our whole team.

18th hole redevelopment preparation
With the 18th hole redevelopment due to start in September, we have commenced preparation for the ‘12a’ hole green in the middle of the 12th fairway. This area is now G.U.R please take relief from the area.

We will be working on reducing the height of cut in this area over the next few weeks and we will treat the area the same as the rest of the greens on the course to get it in the best condition we can before it comes into play.

The green has been recently sand dressed and it will also be verti-drained.

Staff working around golf
We have recently had a few questions from members about our team working on the course during play. We want to re-assure members that our intention is always to try and work with minimal disruption to golfers. However, from time to time our team will be relatively close to play and machines may well be running. The team will always be respectful to players, although at times noise from machinery and working in and around golfers is unavoidable. Most days the tee sheet is full from 7am into the afternoon and so work going on whilst players are on the course is unavoidable if we strive to maintain the course in the condition members desire. Our team will always be happy to chat if there are any concerns or if you wish to find out more about what we’re doing on any given day.

June, and the Club Championships are over with for another year, and another successful one from a course perspective, albeit with some challenges along the way! The team have carried out a huge volume of work to an extremely high standard, we’re hugely grateful for all their efforts.

Our main concentration through the championships is to present the course to its highest possible standard with the resources we have, along with maintaining our greens in peak condition concentrating mainly on trueness and pace working in conjunction with each other. This all started with the planned maintenance programme that kicked off 4-6 weeks prior to our first major event of the year. This then allows time for thinning out the greens through verti-cutting and rolling, which increases trueness and speed, and getting our nutrition right so our greens perform to a high standard. If our nutrition plan isn’t right our greens wouldn’t perform to the standard we strive to have for our major competitions.

As members will be aware, knockout week was all was going to plan up until Friday around midday when extremely heavy rain arrived. It may have only been isolated, but it was heavy enough to flood huge areas of the course in a matter of minutes. Most bunkers were full of water, resulting in sand washing down the faces. Due to the standing water and the condition of the bunkers the decision, which wasn’t taken lightly, was taken to postpone the day’s play for the benefit of everyone. Thankfully the course got some drying time through Friday night into Saturday which allowed us to present the course for the remaining semi-finals and finals on Saturday.

Throughout championship week our greens were steadily running at 10.6 on the stimpmeter. This is about as quick as we can make the greens at Baberton due to their sloping nature and many being quite exposed. For those interested, the following link takes you to a short video by the USGA that demonstrates the process in taking stimpmeter readings to produce this number of 10.6. https://youtu.be/IBqqh_6x0l0

Greens maintenance
After our championship was completed, works shifts to next phase of maintenance with preparation for major competitions and opens. It is important that we allow the greens to breath and rejuvenate them.

Maintenance carried out
• Greens verti-drained with a 12mm solid tine to around 7 inches
• Greens rolled
• Greens lightly verti-cut to clean up surfaces
• Greens cut
• Lightly sand dressed around 7 tonnes
• Brushed in sand
• Dry afternoon roll to smooth out surfaces and work sand into the greens
• Granular feed applied to rejuvenate and recover the plant from being put under a lot of stress through championships

The majority of this work went to plan despite some minor machinery issues. All the work was completed over two days to try and minimise disruption to golf. With a short turn around, it was full focus on our Gents and Seniors Opens, both were very successful with some fantastic feedback over the two events.

We will now rest our greens for a short time with the height of cut on our greens being lifted slightly to allow our surfaces to have a little rest as they will be put under a lot of pressure building up to the Summer Meeting and Lothian’s Amateur Championship Qualifying.

Worn areas and weak tees
We have a few worn areas on the course that we have been working on repairing. These areas have been spiked, overseeded, dressed and fed.
Some of our poorer quality tees have been spiked and seeded to try and encourage new growth. All tees will be fed with an organic based fertiliser to improve density, durability and wear tolerance. We will hopefully see these areas and tees improve over the coming weeks.

John Deere Pro Gator & Gambetti Sprayer
We have recently taken delivery of our John Deere Pro Gator which is a fantastic addition to our current fleet of equipment.

This will make spraying in all areas a lot more accurate with its modern technology. The machine also has foam markers to indicate our last spray line to increase accuracy which is vital to produce good quality consistent surfaces.

Greens Nutrition
• Hydro guard wetting agent & seaweed
• Compost tea bag, terralift plantmax & seaweed
• Organic granular feed vision ultimax 8-2-8
• Integralmax, attraxor, Ryder


General Information and Good Practice
• Trolleys - please can we remind members to avoid pushing trolleys across aprons and tees, and to use the paths and routes provided. For example, to the right of the 7th green / apron please use the path up to the 8th tee. This will help reduce wear in these areas.
• Bunkers, pitch marks and divots - please remember to help yourself, fellow members and the course staff by taking a bit of time and care to keep the course in great condition.
• 8th tee box white markers - members may have noticed the white tees have been moved forward 6-10 yards. This is due to complaints from a neighbour about balls landing in their garden. We have established that balls were going right of the line of trees from the back tee and the move forward has eliminated the issue. This will continue for the remainder of the season and we will review our options over the winter for next season.
• 18th Hole - a communication will be issued to members shortly regarding the 18th hole development and course changes over the winter period.

Unfortunately, this month’s report starts off on a familiar thread – rain! Just as we thought we were through the woods and hopefully entering a decent spell of good weather it all changed very quickly.

On the 22nd of May we recorded 45mm of rain in 24 hours, and in the subsequent 24 hours recorded an additional 55mm. 100mm of rain in two days is a very rare occurrence. With our drains working at full capacity, a large volume of water started backing up on the course leading to significant flooding in various areas. Thankfully, as soon as the volume of rainfall dropped these areas drained very quicky, which shows how well the drainage system is working. In total for the month of May we had over 4 times our average rainfall (197.6mm vs the average of 46.6mm for May) with the majority of this falling over the space of just 7 days.

With this volume of rain, we encountered multiple challenges. We had a water blister appear on our 13th green, bunkers washing out on a daily basis and a drain at the 15th washing out below the surface moving the material below it, causing the area to sink. All that aside we were desperate to make the course playable for some important competitions in our fixture list. Thankfully with a massive effort from the team and a 24-hour break in the weather we just got the course playable for the 1st round of Kerr Quaich and Victoria Medal events. We’re delighted to say the greens coped brilliantly with the volume of rain and they were still running smooth and true. We had some great feedback on the condition of the course – thanks to all those who took the time to pass on your kind words, it really is appreciated by all our team.

Greens Maintenance (Championship preparation)
On Sunday the 12th May we carried out maintenance work to our greens, this will now be the last maintenance we do until the week after championship week. This work consisted of:
• 10mm solid tine
• 7 tonnes top dressing
• Sand worked in
• Greens rolled
• Greens watered to bed in sand
• Organic granular feed applied

STRI Visit and Course Nutrition
Our recent visit from Gary Smith (STRI) went very well and we’re delighted to report that the greens are performing at a very high level. All the data that Gary records will be sent on to the Club in due course and we will use this to plan our work over the coming months. Soil samples and organic matter level tests have also been sent away, we should have the results with us over the next few weeks.

The following nutrition has been applied in recent weeks:

Greens
• Terralift TX 10 5-2-8 granular feed
• Wetting agent & seaweed
• Integral max, Terralift Plant maxx biostimulant, Attraxor & Primo maxx

Aprons
• Selective weed killer, Primo maxx, nitrogen & iron

Tees
• Reward 13-5-20 granular feed
• Primo maxx, nitrogen & iron

Bunker faces
• Selective weed killer, primo maxx & iron

Cutting Practices and Growth Volume
With all the recent moisture, very little air movement and damp mornings/days, the growth has been substantial. From time-to-time some grass clippings will be lying around especially in the rough. Sadly, this is unavoidable when regularly having to cut in wet conditions, although we will try and blow as much of this grass away as possible with our tractor mounted blower. Growth regulator has been applied to the heaviest growth areas of the rough to slow down its growth rate.

Irrigation repair
Our irrigation system recently developed a fault that was preventing us from starting any automatic programmes. Thankfully it has since been fixed and working as normal again.