Eaton
The week was dominated by work to set the course up for the Chester Championships and various club finals over the weekend - mainly mowing and lining the hazards. We are regularly complimented for the latter by the officials - it makes refereeing much simpler when the boundaries are very clear. We had 32 mm of rain through the week, which predictably caused temporary flooding on the greens. We didn’t stimp on Friday, so the ‘season’ is now finished. An analysis of the summer on the greens will be given next week.
Fortunately, Bill Tye had been out later on Thursday and noted how wet things were, so proposed we move immediately to Preferred Lies, ahead of the weekend. England Golf permit competitions played after the 1st of October, with preferred lies, to still be qualifiers, but before then special permission has to be obtained from the County. We were able to do that, so preferred lies came into effect on Saturday (Sept. 23) morning. This will continue until the end of April 2024. In some years we have gone further, to ‘Winter Rules’, where balls can be lifted, cleaned and placed in the General Area in order to protect the course (from people gouging huge divots), but that is a decision that is dictated by circumstances.
The team have begun the ‘greens week' by scarifying and hollow tining the greens - the whole course was done today. 40 tonnes of top dressing (which costs £64/tonne) will be spread in two applications, on Tuesday and Thursday. There will be plenty of rain on Wednesday to wash the first application down into the tine holes. Vertidraining has been deferred by a week or two to give the greens a chance to settle down.
Course Committee
25 September 2023