Killermont club champs

 Killermont Club championships 

We are fairly satisfied with how we presented the course throughout the club championships and the feedback sounds like it performed well too which is great to hear. 

It’s always great to see the course and team peak in performance and conditions leading up to our main events. 

With a really tough start to the season on the back of a harsh wet winter with as much as 1.6m of rain, followed up with a cold spring, it was tough to get our surfaces to recover to our standards in time for early spring play. 

Then it was straight into to some 20 days without a drop of rain in extreme heat so it was all about moisture management with limited irrigation pop ups to greens only, and issues with water feeds etc… that was a challenging period. 

But with all of our wetting agents and bio stimulants in place the one measure which stood us in the best possible conditions was raising heights of cut above the stress point, This ensured we maintained full coverage throughout this period, out with the old sand filled drain lines which got away from us. 

Mid season maintenance and renovations was welcomed to get some essential aeration, sand and seed into the ground,  followed by some good balanced nutritional applications which we are now seeing the benefits. 

Our team now have in place some brilliant course preparation routines which is maximising the product for our members, big focus on having all surfaces cut ahead of golf daily, back out for detailed works like strimming, or getting a dry cut to some lush surfaces etc… 

Our Club championships and all other evening events we are taking it in turns to do a 2nd course preparation ahead of each round so the course is set up like it was first thing in the morning, managing green speeds, raking bunkers, tee set ups, changing or setting holes and blowing debris etc, we feel this has presented a consistent set of standards for our members. 

I cant  thank this team enough for all the work and sacrifices when working long unsociable hours, with as early as 5.00am starts to ensure we keep ahead of golf. We do make sure the guys get their down time back and have come up with a weekend rota system that ensures they only work one in 4 weekends, and on the main events when we are all in for full course preparation and they have the Monday off, only the guys who’s weekend it is in, will cover the Monday prep. With exception to this Monday as it is part of members guests preparation, the next couple of Mondays we will be running as a weekend crew to ensure some time back (this won’t have a negative impact as we will have had everything cut on the Saturday or Sunday depending the main event day)

Now onto members guest preparations this weekend  and if the weather behaves we should be improved across the course again🌱🏌️‍♂️⛳️😎

killermont club championships prep

 Killermont course update!

The last couple of weeks the course has been slightly off peak with a quiet period in regards to events which is great, as gives us an opportunity to get some of the disruptive but “essential” maintenance done.  From greens maintenance, drainage works, all mid season fertiliser applications and much more. 

 It’s all about timing of these applications so that we recover and peak throughout the club championships into members guest. 

This week it’s all been about course preparation, ramping up all of our cutting routines getting all growth down to the desired heights and manicuring in our presentation. Now that we  have the recovery and coverage on all surfaces we have now applied growth regulators to all surfaces so all growth will be under control and with the best possible turf quality in place. 

Since our greens maintenance we have been working the greens back to the speeds we have maintained throughout the first half of the season. We aim anywhere between 10.5- 11.5 depending on the conditions and looking back at our daily updates we worked out that our average greens speed the season so far has been (10.9) and that has been fairly consistent since the Edward trophy week. 

Obviously the last 10 days or so speeds dropped off due to the maintenance etc but we are quite pleased with how our greens have performed this year. 

Speeds back up to 10.5 this morning with just a cut, a cut and roll could get us 11+ depending on what moisture comes at us.

Also, now we have had the full team in place for a few weeks or so we feel like we are starting to manage some of the more detailed work like flymow and strimming around the course. 

We are in real good shape for this weekends club championship qualifiers, one or two things like weeding around signage just got away from us, but we will tick these jobs off early next week before we head into club championships finals weekend. 

We noticed that we had been managing to present the course set up to a much higher standard for our Tuesday medals than we had for our Saturdays medals, reason being we would almost certainly have the full team in on a week day which was frustrating. 

We have come up with a plan now for us all to be in on for our Saturdays medals for a full course preparation, with half the team in on alternative Mondays to get time back. 

We want to present the best possible course set up on all of our main events so we are keen to see what we can deliver on this front moving forward.

This Saturdays club championships qualifier set up is as follows. 

Greens 2x cut 

Greens rolled 

Holes changed 

Tees cut 

Full tee set up divot & blow

Full bunker preparation 

All fairways cut 

All approaches 2x hand cut 

All weather permitting as there could be some adverse weather but fingers crossed for a good weekend of golf here at Glasgow GC for our championship qualifiers. 

Glasgow GC Greens Team