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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the course and clubhouse are now closed for the safety of members and staff.

The office team, Keith and Nicola, have relocated to work from their homes. This has caused some disruption whilst I.T. systems were put in place, but everything should now be back to normal. Well almost, we only have a single telephone line, which Keith is manning, and the club systems are operating slower in remote mode. You can contact Keith on the usual number, 01257 255235, but there are no further options to listen to. Please be patient if you can’t get through first time.

Club has had to put Deborah and the bar staff on furlough (paid lay-off) whilst the clubhouse is closed. Dave McMullan’s cleaning contract is on temporary hold, and Dave, Mikey and the other kitchen team are not able to work. The pro-shop is also closed. This is hard on them, and we are aware that many of self-employed members find themselves in similar predicaments. Hopefully the government assistance for self-employed will kick-in soon. Even with this support, we all need to help each other along the way.

On the positive side, in line with England Golf and BIGGA guidelines, the greens staff are, for the moment, able to continue to work. Unencumbered by golfers, they are really getting to grips with the course which is looking better and better every day. Dan, Josh, Mike, and Scott are, of course, working with social distancing, cleaning protocols and other precautions in place.  You will see all the same familiar faces when the club reopens.

Some of you will have seen the video made by Steve Norman and posted to the club’s Facebook and Twitter pages. If you haven’t yet viewed it, you can do so by scrolling down to the end of this blog. The course is looking fantastic.

In the background the Directors are working hard with Keith and Nicola to ensure we keep all expenses to minimum, ranging from simple thing like putting Sky TV on hold, to speaking to our bank about securing finance over the shutdown. We are also planning to apply for help with the wage bill for those staff who are laid off. Unfortunately, we have no such help with the staff who have to work. This includes Dan and his team, if they were laid-off to take advantage of the wage support we would rapidly lose the greens and fairways. The damage would take months to rectify. The upkeep of the course comes second only to the safety and welfare of our staff and members.

With the clubhouse now closed members can’t read the noticeboards or speak to the staff and other members, communication via email and social media has become very important.

If the club doesn’t have your email, or has an old email for you, we can’t keep you fully informed.

If you want to stay in touch please ensure we have your current email address. If you know members who don’t have email or access to social media, we ask you to give them a call from time to time to keep them updated. The club will try to ring round members without email addresses, but you can all help us by doing this as well.

As you will understand, we don’t know how long the emergency will last. This means the social and golf calendar will be constantly changing. We will try to reschedule what we can, but invariably we will have to cancel some things. We already know that this year’s Victory Trophy has been postponed until next year.

We may also have to cancel/rearrange some of the Opens and Invitation days, but it will be a challenge to fit everything in.

Things WILL return to normal, Gathurst Golf Club WILL survive and THRIVE again, but we will need your continued support.

Stay Safe.

Now here’s the video we promised. Thanks go to our very own Steve Norman who is doing a great impression of Sky Sport’s Ken Brown.

 

 

 

Click below to Download your copy of the March edition of the Grapevine

Grapevine_2020_03

Dear Members,

I am now one month into my year as the Captain of Gathurst Golf Club. On Wednesday the 5^th February 2020 I along with my wife Pauline attended “The Society of Liverpool Captains”, Introductory evening ay Huyton & Prescott Golf Club. This is where we met for the first time all the 27 member clubs of the Liverpool Society 2020 captains and their wives/partners. The meal and speeches were followed by a meeting where we agreed on our Captains year name which is:

The Visionaries (2020 Vision)

It was a great honour to be part of this on behalf of Gathurst Golf Club, I am greatly looking forward to visiting and getting to know all the 27 clubs. Sharing thoughts and ideas with my fellow Captains to help all golf clubs in the Liverpool Society, prosper and grow. Not forgetting I’ll be playing lots of Golf….!!!!!!

I am also really chuffed that the club have agreed to move the Captains day to Saturday 27^th June 2020. Over the next three months I will be working with Mark Schofield (Vice Captain) along with the Golf, Social and House committees to finalise the arrangements for the day/evening.

The Lady Captain Elaine King and I have chosen “Breast Cancer Now” for our charity and your support would be greatly appreciated.

Breast Cancer Care and Breast Cancer Now merged in 2019. They united to create one charity for everyone affected by breast cancer and are the UK’s first comprehensive breast cancer charity.

How your support helps!

1 in 7 women in the UK will develop breast cancer

Your donation will help to make sure the world-class research taking place in their labs, and the life-changing care and support they provide to those who so desperately need it, continues. If we act now, we can create a future where everyone who develops breast cancer lives – and is supported to live well.

As we approach the start of the golf season with the Captains opening dinner dance Saturday 14^th March, followed by the Captains drive in Sunday 15^th March. I would like to ask if you haven’t already, to consider sponsoring one of the Seventy-Two Competitions scheduled for this season. This gives me the opportunity to have a bacon barm (On me) and a round of golf with lots of different members. Helping me achieve my goal of playing with as many of our 491 golf members as possible in 2020.

For those of you especially the new members, who are unsure what sponsoring a competition entails please see below:

There are two prizes for each of the competitions 1^st Division & 2nd Division so the norm is for two people to put their names on the club prize donors list on the notice board. Obviously one person can sponsor if they wish. The prizes normally take the form of a Clarkes golf voucher usually between £30 to £40 or golf merchandise. Although the sponsors can clearly choose any prize they wish. The tee off time is the sponsor choice and Ian White (Chair of Golf) and I will ensure you get the tee off time you want.

Thank you for all your support

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Johnson

Gathurst Golf Club Captain 2020

We are currently recruiting for our Ladies’ section and have launched a new initiative called ‘Ladies Get into Golf’. We are asking for your help to introduce any interested, prospective beginner ladies (wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters, friends, etc.) to the club.

If you know someone who may be interested in joining the Ladies’ section, then please invite them along to our Open Day so that they can give it a try.

New ladies who are beginners will initially be offered a FREE group lesson by a PGA professional at the Open Day on Sunday, 29th March 2020 (meet at 2:00pm for a 2:30pm lesson).  Can’t make the Open Day, then no problem; just complete an application form and if this is accepted, come along to the first lesson on Thursday, 16th April at 6.00pm or Saturday, 18th April at 2.00 pm.

The programme will consist of 10 weekly sessions which include both practical and theoretical lessons to gain knowledge and hone skills. All this for a bargain price of £50.

For further information please take a look at the leaflet below; download a copy and pass it on:

Interested ladies can reserve a place on the taster sessions by completing and returning the application form in the leaflet or sending an email with details to secretary@gathurstgc.co.uk,

 

 

Get into Golf Brochure 2020

Get into Golf Poster2020

We have some time limited fantastic offers for golfing families and golfing ladies:-

 

The work on the undermining issue with the 11th ditch is almost complete and the 10th and 11th holes will be back in play at the weekend.

As mentioned previously, water was undermining the paving flags lining the bottom of the ditch. When we investigated the source of the water we found that it was coming from under the wall as well as from the outlet pipe (plastic pipe put in when the ditch was dug).

We suspected a leak in the plastic piping causing water to re-route under the wall, but digging down to look for it, we discovered the actual problem. When the ditch was originally put in, a second large diameter clay pipe had been dug through and not connected into the wall solid plastic pipe. We therefore had to dig a full trench tracing the clay pipe back towards the 11th green until we could find a suitable place to tee it into the plastic pipe.

We also knew that a drain came out of the 11th green just behind the Sycamore tree. So, whilst we were working in the area, we decided to check if this drain was already connected and, if not, connect it at the same time to help dry the green. It is just as well that we carried out this check as we discovered that it wasn’t connected in but went into a blocked clay drain. To tee-in this green drain we had to lower the plastic pipe by nearly 18 inches to get below the clay drain at this point.

With all the drains joined into the plastic pipe the trench was then back-filled.

To help maintain these drains we built a new chamber where the big clay drain, the plastic pipe, and drain from the green are all meet. This has now has a concrete base with 1 outlet. These drains will be jetted to make sure that they are clear.

Now the new chamber is finished and back-filled we can re open the holes. The base of the chamber is just over 6 feet deep, which is why we didn’t want anyone playing golf near it.

The final part of the job is to re-build the wall at the beginning of the flagged ditch, stone up, replace the concrete edging kerbs and re-flag the ditch. We will close the holes again ONLY whilst working on these jobs.

The work required to sort out this problem was much more than we had anticipated, hence the reason why the holes were closed longer than we would have liked.

One last point:

The back-filled trench is very soft, needs to bed-in, and is not ready for footfall. We are therefore building a temporary crossing point which everyone must use.

Dan.

 

James Hutchinson, BIGGA Membership Services Manager – Sustainability and Ecology, carried out an ecological and environmental assessment during October 2019 to:
• Assess the ecological and environmental issues relating to Gathurst Golf Club and its surrounding environs
• Provide an in-depth report highlighting any findings that may have arisen from the aforementioned ecological and environmental issues
• Provide an easy to follow plan for the management and greenkeepers thereby improving the flora and fauna quality of Gathurst Golf Club

The report is very comprehensive, take several years to implement, and will benefit both the club out members, and  flora and fauna.

You will find a hole by hole plan with some interesting photographs James took during his visits.

Click here to download your copy: GathurstEnvironmentalReport

For more information about BIGGA (The British and International Golf Greenkeeping Association) visit their webite : BIGGA

If you have any comments about the plan please feel free to talk to Dan or Keith Melia.

 

The Men’s fixture list for the 2020 season is now complete and the sheet asking for donors is on the notice board. We would like to encourage members to sponsor a competition and donate prizes.

Normally two members will jointly sponsor a competition and provide 2 prizes to the value of around £40 each. These can either be vouchers for the proshop, or gifts (e.g. bottles of wine, dining out vouchers, etc.).

As an incentive and a thank you to those prepared to sponsor a men’s competition, the golf committee have agreed to have a prize during the year that can only be won by those having sponsored a men’s competition.

This will be played for on the last singles competition of the year (4th October). In addition to the normal 1st and 2nd division prizes there will be 2 further prizes for those having been sponsors during the year. The first prize is 20% reduction on 2021 golf fees, the second prize a 15% reduction. These prizes are the largest the club offer, please consider supporting your club through sponsorship.

The 2019 Donor’s Prizes were won by Jimmy Summers (20% reduction off his subscription) and Ian White (15% reduction).

Golf committee

ClubV1 Emails – Going Into Junk

Update in relation to members receiving emails from ClubV1 but being put into Junk.

Recently, several clubs have reported members receiving emails from ClubV1 but they were being put into Junk.

This seemed to be an intermittent issue and appeared to be typically affecting Microsoft accounts; Hotmail.com, Hotmail.co.uk, outlook.com, etc., however some other domains also seemed to be affected, for example gmail, TalkTalk and AOL.

After some investigation by the technical team, we were pointed in the direction of our Dedicated IP address that’s used to send emails. We raised this issue with our deliverability management team at Sparkpost (Email Senders), who then escalated the issue to Microsoft.

We have now been set up with a new dedicated IP, 100% of our email traffic now going through this new IP and our old IP will be deleted in the next week or so.

The route cause of the problem was that our old IP was an Amazon Web Services (AWS) IP,  which Sparkpost are moving away from. Some of the major mailbox providers are flagging AWS IPs, which is why we were getting an intermittent issue.