Week commencing 18th April- Christmas came early....

This week started off with a delivery of new waterproofs which felt like Christmas had come early in the greenkeeper sheds! No longer would I have to wear my antiquated waterproofs from my Duke of Edinburgh Expedition days, which I’m pretty sure still had dried pot noodle and energy bars stuck to them.

Wait a minute, a warm front is forecast for this week…. Typical! Note to self, it may be cold at 7am but after walking round the Hilton raking bunkers it sure warms you up, so leave the waterproofs behind next time!

Once that job had been done and with the bunkers looking their best, it was on to collecting turf from the old 10th green on the Allander for use elsewhere on the course. This turf was used to repair ground that had sunk and become damaged on the first whole on the Allander at the bottom of the hill. The process of fixing this is to use an edging iron (see picture below)

 to cut out squares of turf, then to use a turfing lifter to lift about 3” thick squares up. (see picture of turfing lifter below).

The damaged area is then filled with sand and levelled off leaving about 1-2” gap at the top. The turf is then laid on top and cut into place to ensure the turf will take to the sand beneath and blend into the rest of the fairway.

My Tuesday started off with some pace, my job was to follow behind Gordon and Scott as they cut both the surrounding grass on the greens and the top of the tees. My job was to switch behind them. To do this you use a metal pole that contains a plastic rod (see picture below), you skim across the grass dispersing any clumps. This is done for a number of reasons. Firstly, it stops the grass sitting there and stopping grass growing below it, it does not look good when it dries out and lastly it may inhibit golf balls from rolling freely. My afternoon was spent clearing up some of the remaining logs from the bonfires at the 18^th tee on the Hilton.

Tuesday was such a nice day weather-wise! I had learnt from Monday not to wear my new waterproofs unless I wanted to keel over from heat exhaustion! My morning started with a job that a lot of golfers may not know goes on called dewing the greens. This consists of myself pushing this wide brush around the greens in order to disperse the water droplets. There are a few reasons for doing this. Firstly it allows the golf balls to run better and it reduces the risk of the grass scorching in the sun as the water particles can magnify the suns' rays which creates heat. Lastly, it reduces the chances of fungal infections ruining the grass. Who would have thought it was so scientific! (See picture below).

For the rest of the day I helped Graeme, Heather and Scott to flymo the grass surrounding the tees and grass surrounding the bunkers. This task is a great team effort. Two/ three people will flymo or strim the grass while the fourth person will use the leaf blower to blow the grass clippings out of the bunkers and disperse the grass clippings. Using the leaf blowers is a bit like having a jet pack on your back, it is great fun!

Its FRIDAY everyone’s favourite day of the week! My day started with Graeme, blowing debris from in front of the clubhouse and shoe blowers to tidy the place up a bit. We then set off to do multiple tasks around the Allander including emptying the bins, moving tee markers, moving pin positions and changing the flags and poles to shiny new ones. In the afternoon, there were similar tasks including raking bunkers on the Hilton.

Let’s all pray the weather stays like this for a few more days! I thought the picture below was particularly nice of the 17th green on the Hilton, at 7:42am.