What an incredible spell of weather we have had, although August was a bit colder than the norm, a real indian summer has graced us in September with no rain for three weeks now and none forecast for the next two weeks!
As you can imagine this is good and bad for the links team, the hope was to overseed some fairways, walkways, tees and greens but the dry spell has halted us a little but with god soil temperatures there is hopefully still time .
The course has been looking great with the lads still in full flow presenting the golf course to the highest standard possible and with everything still growing it has been a very busy period for the team after the last blog we have had the St David's Gold Cross amateur tournament, the Open amateur medal as well as the ladies and mens summer meetings and next week sees the Senior Men's Open and the 25th playing of the Aberdovey and Royal St David's pro-am.
Nothing unusual to report as we are still very much in the summer maintenance where high presentation is paramount.
The course has been playing very well with nice firm,dry linksy conditions being the order of the day,the greens have been running smoothly and putting nicely.I am tremendously exited with the amount of fescue i am now seeing in the greens and this will only help in producing even better putting surfaces in the future.
Once again even during such busy periods the links team have been keeping up with regular aeration,wetting agent applications,fertilizer applications when required, topdressing to keep playing surfaces smooth etc as well as all the cutting of the playing surfaces.
We have seen some fairy ring activity this year as have most clubs in the country, the hot dry spell and a wet/dry cycle are ideal conditions for these to flourish.The worst ones have recovered nicely by regular aeration and localised additional inputs of wetting agent to help reduce the hydrophopic areas in the middle of the fairy rings as the team is doing in the picture below.
As you can imagine working on the golf course, we do get to see some amazing wildlife and some extraordinary sights that nature provides us with,an amazing huge spiders web and there were hundreds down by the 6th hole.
A stunning array of colour's on this caterpillar on the 13 th green
Amazing sunrise over the 7th green.
A picture of the Team working hard during the summer meeting moving holes, cutting and rolling for extra smoothness to the putting surfaces.
On a personal note my girlfriend and I welcome a new addition to our family,another boy to our male dominated household,god help Sian!Flynn was born on August 12th and is doing great.
Hard to believe but with this weather but we are only a few weeks away from the start of our winter programme, we have a lot of work planned again this winter and some exiting visual changes to the golf course which will really make a difference to the course.
Will keep you all posted.
Regards,
Rhys Butler, Links Manager,Royal St David's Golf Club.
