Despite the recent prolonged cold spells, the Tartan Pro tour that’s taking place on the course today (Thu) and tomorrow has given us a focus.
The greenkeeping team has been busy, with the course a hive of activity.
They are confident that the competition finds the course in the best condition possible for this time of year. Hopefully our members will agree and they’ll also be out enjoying the course in the next few days.
Next week, the team will be scarifying, top dressing and fertilising the greens on the 1562 course. This should take a couple of days and they are looking to do the Broomfield the week after.
As ever, they will do their best to keep disruption to golfers to a minimum.
The cost of pitchmarks
One of the main challenges on the course at the moment is pitchmarks
It only takes seconds to fix one, but it can take months to heal.
We would suggest the amount of greenkeeping hours spent every day repairing pitchmarks could be used more productively elsewhere around the course.
For greens to be smooth and consistent, we need topdressing.
However, the more unrepaired pitchmarks there are, the more topdressing is needed.
We all know that putting on greens that have just been topdressed is not great, so imagine this has to happen once a month, or even fortnightly.
Greenkeeping team members are again taken off essential jobs to get topdressing completed in time.
After topdressing we still need to cut the greens. Sand is then brought up with the mowers which inevitably blunts the cylinders, creating additional work for the mechanic.
Pitchmarks create a seed bed for weeds, which can cause damage to the plant. Then there’s a need for chemical weed control and disease prevention, which is more unnecessary additional expense.
The bottom line is that finding, fixing and treating the damage caused by pitchmarks adds up to thousands of pounds in both time and resource.
A pitchmark takes seconds to repair. Please repair your pitchmarks.
Meet the team
Finlay Keith is our new apprentice greenkeepe
Finlay Keith is our new modern apprentice greenkeeper who joined us at the start of this month.
Finlay loves working outdoors and thought this would be a good choice of career for him.
He has played golf in the past and is keen to get his clubs back out now he works on the course. He supports Dundee and he hopes they will be back in the big time sooner rather than later.
If you happen to see Finlay when you are out playing, please say hello and introduce yourself as I’m sure he is keen to meet as many of the members in the coming few weeks.
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