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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.

 

FORMAT AND RULES OF ENTRY

A Winter League is to be run by the members of the club for the members.  It is not a club run competition.  Official tee times cannot be booked and it cannot be operated on a shotgun start basis.  It is not affiliated to the club in any way.

• The format will be Individual Stableford played on Saturday mornings at 09.30 commencing 09 November 2019 and concluding 07 March 2020. That is 18 weeks.  The best 10 rounds from the maximum of 18 rounds played shall count, ie the total number of points from your best 10 rounds will comprise your overall total score.  The overall Winter League winner will be the player with highest cumulative number of points from those 10 qualifying rounds.

• A player does not have to play every week. If they do it is their best 10 scores from 18.  If a player only plays 8 rounds, then just the 8 scores will count.  New players can join at any point during the window of the competition as long as they understand and accept the format – in particular understanding that they may not be able to complete 10 qualifying rounds depending on when they joined.

• The League shall commence with each players current club handicap for their first round. A players handicap will then be adjusted (go up or down or stay the same) dependant upon their performance and your personal category, ie play over par up 0.1, play under par and handicaps shall be reduced in accordance with number of stableford points scored better than par.  Such adjustments will be made by the Winter League organisers.

• This handicap will be recorded separately for the Winter League only and will not impact on a players’ official club handicap. Thus, when the new season commences in 2020 all players will revert to their official club handicaps regardless of your performances during the Winter League.

• If players wish to take part in a weekly “chuck-in” then this can also be facilitated. It is suggested that a £1 fee is paid prior to each set of matches and it will then be operated in the traditional manner, ie winner takes all, unless more than 10 players take part on the day when 2nd place will also get a cut based on a 70/30 pay out.

• Rules of the day will be in accordance with those stated by the club, ie whatever the course status is at the time.

• Full rules of golf shall apply at all times, eg no putt concessions, if a player loses a ball then play another, if we are on temporary greens then that is what we are on, etc.

• The entry fee is £10 per person and this shall be paid prior to commencement of a players’ first qualifying round. The total amount collected will pay for a trophy (or similar) for the overall winner together with Clarkes Golf vouchers for those finishing 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd overall at the end of the Winter League event.  All entries shall be submitted to any of the organisers noted below.  Players are requested to provide their name, contact number and email address together with the £10 entry fee.

If any further information is required then please contact one of the following organisers:-

Andy Davies   Ian Thompson   Drew Winstanley

Bunker renovations plan 2019

September 

Monday 30^th start bunker renovations.

3^rd hole, all 3 bunkers are to be re shaped, drained and lined with turf. The temp green will be moved closer to the existing bunkers and constructed from sand to aid drainage. This will be turfed with new turf from our turf nursery. The work should take up to 2 weeks to complete, they will be left then with no sand until the spring.

October

Monday 14^th

14^th hole, the ground between the path on the left side of the green and the green will be re graded to leave a slight slope from path to green. The 3 bunkers will be taken away and 2 bigger and deeper bunkers put in their place, these will be drained and turf lined. The spoil from this work will be used to reduce the slope off the back right and the back of the green. There will be a new temp green made on the other side of the path that again will be constructed from sand with drainage installed to help keep the area drier in the winter. The turf that is needed for the job will be coming from our turf nursery. This work should be completed in 3 weeks.

November

Monday 4^th

15^th hole we are going to re construct the 2 existing bunkers and add one more to the back left of the green. These will be dug, drained and turf lined.

The turf for the job will be coming from our turf nursery. This work will be completed in the 2 weeks.

Monday 18^th

The 2 bunkers on the 12^th will be reduced into the ground and re shaped. A new greenside bunker will be constructed at the start of the mound to the left of the green near where the old bunker used to be. All will be drained and turf lined again. This work will be completed within 3 weeks.

December

Monday 9^th

17^th hole we are going to re construct and re shape the greenside bunkers, they will also be reduced into the ground to make them much deeper. There will be a small mound created around the back of the green to help with the tree roots coming out of the ground. The 2 bunkers short of the green will be merged into 1 and re shaped as well. All bunkers will be drained and turf lined. This work will be completed within 2 weeks.

Tee renovations plan 2019

September

Monday 23^rd, I am going to be extending the tee on the 10^th hole.

It has been agreed that the 2 tees on the 10^th are best to become 1 long tee, the extension will go to the path coming from the 9^th fairway. The area in front of the existing tee will be built up by around 2 feet and levelled, the are that is currently the lower part of the tee will be reduced by around 12 inches and levelled, the area at the back for the whites will be raised by about 6 inches and levelled. The width of the tee will be increased to the far side of the path to allow more tee positions. We will put a new path on the other side of the trees where the current ladies’ tee is sighted.

The whole tee will then be turfed and left for the winter, by doing it so early should mean that when the season starts in late March this tee could be back in play.

October

Monday 7^th start Tee renovations.

We will be carrying out some major renovation work this year on the tees. The first job will be to scarify all the tees then topdress them with straight sand. Once this has been brushed in, we will overseed then feed.

Tuesday15th

The next phase of the work will start, we are going to solid tine the tees to about 4 inches then topdress heavily and overseed.

This is the last of the planned work for the Autumn but we will be keeping the worm castes off them this year and trying to keep them cut short.

When we get into December or January, we will run the shockwave over them and get a deep compaction relief done.

In the spring, before the tees are brought back into play, we will overseed and topdress again.

Kind Regards

Dan

Many congratulations to the Gathurst representatives in the recent Senior Victory Trophy. A fantastic effort by the team with overall 1st position wins in both the Nett and Gross team events.

Well done to all involved and a special thanks to the Victory Trophy committee and in particular Ian White and Alan Priestley for their dedication, organisation and support.

Also on behalf of the team I would like to thank all the assistants on the day, Gathurst members welcoming visiting players and ensuring safety on the course.

Many of our members gave their time and provided tremendous assistance on the day, the event was very well organised, delivered on time, visitors could not help to be impressed.

You all proved to be a great part of the Gathurst team.

Many thanks,

Jim Wall. Captain GGC