Conditions on the course are marvellous. Speaking to guest golfers, they were all full of praise for the team we have maintaining the course. Damian and Matt are our two green keepers on staff and we have the assistance of Nathan for two days a week. I think everyone agrees, what a fabulous job they do. As mentioned in a previous blog, we have refurbished our backup surrounds and fairway mowers so that they are in the same condition as our front line machines. This allows the fairways and surrounds to be prepared quicker than has been the case in the past. As a consequence of this, however, the backup surrounds mower which was previously used to do the first cut, i.e. the first cut of rough, now is no longer available to do this. A trial has been done using one of the zero turns to do this job but the result of this trial was not satisfactory – scalping and not doing a clean cut were two of the observations. The overall observation about using a zero turn for the first cut was that the result was “horrible”. This observation was from our course supervisor Damian and I would support every call that Damian makes about the standard of the golf course. So this leaves us with a bit of a conundrum – the better preparation of the fairways and surrounds comes at a cost, if we maintain the status quo of no first cut. Alternatives are to try and purchase a high hours machine that can be used for the first cut or to accept a lesser standard on our fairways and use one of the backup mowers for the first cut. One has a dollar disadvantage and the other a presentation disadvantage. Here I have tried to put the pluses and minuses of the first cut objectively and I know that some members prefer the first cut but being cognisant of all of the issues surrounding it, it may deserve a second “think”. In any case all members want the best for the club and we will be discussing this subject at the Match & Greens this coming Tuesday.
Social Golf Club
Guest player numbers to our course are increasing. This time of the year we normally see an increase but we are noticing that we have more on the course and more in the clubhouse. One group I was talking to today, have been coming here for 7 or 8 years and have booked their two dates for 2017 – you can see their photograph to the right – a very pleasant group of gentlemen. They are a social golf club called the Georges River Social Golf Club.