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Tee To Green June

23rd June 2025

Find out the latest from our Greenkeepers in this month's Tee to Green.

Invitational Pro-Am Downs Course 2019

The Downs Course

As we move into the heart of the golfing season, the team at The Downs Course has been hard at work preparing the playing surfaces for optimal performance and aesthetics. The last month has seen continued momentum in our maintenance programme, with a focus on plant health, playability, and consistency across the course. We have had a decent splash of rain which started to green up the course, but now have been hit with another dry spell, with temperatures hitting 30 degrees Celsius in the 3rd week of June.

We’ve applied a granular fertiliser to all tees and aprons to encourage strong, uniform growth and improve colour and resilience. This feeds the plant from the roots up and supports the high wear areas that see regular foot traffic and divot damage.
The fairways have received a carefully balanced foliar feed – a liquid nutrient application sprayed directly onto the leaf. This fast-acting method gives us immediate results in colour and plant vitality while reducing the environmental footprint and potential leaching that comes with heavier granular applications.

Sand dressing on the greens has continued as part of our regular programme to maintain smoothness, firmness, and consistency. These light and frequent topdressings help dilute thatch, aid surface drainage, and contribute to firmer playing conditions. We remain committed to this vital work to provide true putting surfaces all year round.

The team has also focused on improving the consistency of our bunkers. This month we’ve adjusted sand levels and redistributed material to improve both appearance and playability. However, in the last few weeks we have had to smooth rake the bunkers, as putting a tine rake into them just brings up the stones and chalk from underneath causing contamination issues. The bunkers were only lined with upside down turf when the bunker project renovation happened 5 years ago and now that it is degrading it's starting to cause an issue.

The greens are due a granular fertiliser feed this week, which will aid in plant health and keep the greens where we want them. Greens generally have been pretty good, with good trueness and speed recorded. However, some irrigation issues have caused some spots on the greens to burn off and this has had to be addressed with regular hand watering with the addition of wetting agents, to move the water through into the soil profile.

See you on the course.

Rob Dyer, Head Greenkeeper, The Downs Course

Looking over to the 2nd fairway
Definition on the 15th hole complex
Fairways improving on colour with rain and foilar feed.
Redistribution of sand in bunkers
Greens becoming more consistent with trying new chemistry
Wild flowers popping up all over the place.
Looking back towards the gazebo from the 8th green
1st tee now being hand cut

The Park course

Another hot and dry month but we did have a spell of rain over a weekend which has helped the course. Over Festival of Speed weekend it was exceptionally hot and we tried to keep the greens a bit wetter than we normally like due to the intense heat and how difficult it is getting around the course with Festival on to do any hand watering. The greens still struggled, and on Sunday when we left they were looking fine but come Monday we had severe dry patch on all the greens. With a week of hand watering with wetting agents tablets and also sprayed a wetting agent/soil feed the greens have recovered  and healthy as we head in to Club Championship week.

While the course was shut for Festival of Speed we took the opportunity to do a midseason greens maintenance. We applied 1 ton of sand dressing to each green followed by verti-drain to a depth of 200mm and then use the pro core with 10mm tines to a depth 125mm. This method worked the sand in to the profile and also the pro core reduced the impact (holes) of the verti-drain. The whole process was completed with an iron on the greens to help work sand in and smooth the surface. The greens were cut once more before we just left them to recover over the Festival.

Festival of Speed was the busiest one to date, over 30000 people a day accessing the Festival through The Park course. Everyone was well behaved it was the VIP car parks on 3rd/12th/13th that we had a few problems. Couple of days we had some cars doing donuts and then Sunday night we had reports a couple of Ferrari’s using the 13th fairway as a drift demo. Fortunately with the conditions very dry not much damage was done but is clearly visible. The dry conditions also helped with the 10th hole. When everything was removed the 10th look like the rest of the course. Because of the dry Spring/Summer we will terra rake all the fairways closer to the Autumn as well as carry on with our yearly verti-drain of all the fairways. So the decision was taken not to do any work on the 10th as we will be doing it in a couple of months.

For the next couple of weeks now we will focus on Club Championships week. The greens had a top dress this week and we will be doing a double verti-cut next week. These processes will help improve trueness and speeds. Heights of cut will be reduced to 3.2mm. Rest of course will be cut as normal and fairways, even though brown, will be cut to improve presentation.

The Copse

The Copse had a mini maintenance as well during the Festival. Similar to main greens but only a 10mm tine and no verti-drain. With the little rain we’ve had and our irrigation it’s recovering and presenting well. It continues to be busy and very popular which is pleasing to see. We now have junior camps on for 6 weeks and a few other clubs have booked the facility for the day.

Look forward to seeing you the course.

Scott Peterson, Head Greenkeeper, The Park course and The Copse.

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