Gathurst Golf Club

Course Status: OPEN

All Members and visitors must book using the website, BRS, pro shop, or office.

News

Thank you message from Tom King

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It’s been almost a week since Gathurst held its 57th AGM I am still in shock and overwhelmed with the decision to make me an Honorary life member.

I would like to thank all the members who attended the meeting and ratified the decision made by the board, who put me forward for this tremendous honour.

I joined Gathurst some 30 years ago when we were a 9-hole golf club, one of the reasons for joining the club, was that I would not have to queue up at a municipal course for hours on end to play a round of golf.

Little did I know at joining this fantastic golf club, what sort of impact it would have on my life.

I was given my first official handicap of 16 by Harry Marrow, for those of you who do not know, or did not know Harry, he was a larger than life character within in the golf club, I thought this first handicap of 16 was a little harsh, Harry told me not to worry it will go up and down.

He was right it went up to 18, then came down over the next couple of years to 9 which I still play of today.

Some of my proudest moments at Gathurst have been being elected on to the board of directors where I served for 12 years, serving as chairman on three of the committees over that period.

Being made Captain in 2004 and president in 2017, being made chairman of the Centenary committee from 2011 until completion of the centenary in 2013.

Representing Gathurst playing in the South Lancs League, also the senior victory trophy team.

Playing in the South Lancs snooker and dominoes league over the last thirty years, and being chairman of that league for the last 10 years.

Then in 2017 I became Captain of the society of Liverpool golf club captains which was a great honour for me personally and an honour for Gathurst Golf club. I travelled up and down the country representing the society and Gathurst at many functions and competitions.

Now my wife Elaine being appointed Lady Captain for 2020 another proud moment in my life and her life at Gathurst golf Club, I am sure she will have a great year in office, with the support of all the members

But these achievements don’t compare to the pinnacle of being made an Honorary life member of Gathurst Golf Club

Once again thank you to all the members for bestowing on me this great honour.

Best wishes to all the incoming officers for 2020, I am sure you will have a great year.

Best wishes to Janet Davies on her appointment to lady Captain of the society of Liverpool lady golf Captains.

To the chairman and board of directors keep up the good work.

To all the staff at Gathurst who have supported me over the years thank you.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New year

Yours sincerely.

Tom King.

 

 

Men’s Competition Prize Donors 2020

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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

GGC Says farewell to Barbara Wood

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Friday 1st November saw the Club Secretary, Barbara Wood, retire after 7 1/2 years with the club.

We wish Barbara a long and happy retirement, and thank her for all her hard work on behalf of the club and it’s members.

Jeff Hurst (GGC Chair) Presenting Barbara with a lovely bouquet

Barbara sharing a joke with Jeff

Barbara’s last duty, drawing the 100 club numbers for the October draw with Mark Jordan

The cake tasted as good as it looked

 

 

Club Email Problems

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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.

 

Junior Prize Presentation 2019

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The 2019 Junior Prize Presentation Evening took place on Tuesday 1st October, approximately 50 attended, but many couldn’t make it due to a clash with the Shevington High School Open Evening.

The Lady Captain, Phyllis Wigginton, was also unable to attend due to illness, so the Captain, Jim Wall, presented the prizes in her absence. The continued support of the Ladies Section is greatly appreciated.

It was Daniel Ainscough’s last presentation as a Junior and he was presented with a memento of his two years as Junior Captain.

Congratulations to all the winners. Thanks also to Mike Black for is assistance on the night, the Junior Organiser, Doug Pickering for all his hard work, Chris Clarke for his coaching classes, and to all the others who give up their time to make the Gathurst Junior Section so successful.

Here are a few photographs. Unfortunately new LED lighting installed recently to save energy caused too much shadowing on the attendees, therefore the photos aren’t as good as we would have liked.

The group photo proved to be a problem for a different reason –  most of the Juniors were taller than the dignitaries!

Doug Pickering, Junior Organisor with Junior Captain, Daniel Ainscough

  Lady Vice Captain, Elaine King, observing the Captain, Jim Wall, presenting George Smith with one of his prizes

Captain Jim Wall with the 2 minors, Joel and Megan

Bradley Nelson with his prizes, along with the Junior Captain Dan Ainscough

Prize winners with dignitaries “hiding” in the background

WINTER LEAGUE 2019/20

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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 1st, 2nd and 3rd 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

Winter Works Plan 2019

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Bunker renovations plan 2019

September 

Monday 30th start bunker renovations.

3rd 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 14th

14th 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 4th

15th 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 18th

The 2 bunkers on the 12th 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 9th

17th 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 23rd, I am going to be extending the tee on the 10th hole.

It has been agreed that the 2 tees on the 10th are best to become 1 long tee, the extension will go to the path coming from the 9th 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 7th 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

Janet Davies appointed Lady Captain of the Liverpool Society of Lady Golf Captains 2020

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Our sincere congratulations  to Mrs Janet Davies  (Lady Captain 2008 & Lady President 2017) who has been appointed Lady Captain of the Liverpool Society of Lady Golf Captains for 2020.

Janet takes up her position at West Lancashire Golf Club on Friday 18th October 2019.

She extends her thanks and sincere appreciation for all the good wishes from Club Members, Society Captains, Friends and Family.

She is looking forward to meeting other Captains, Past and Present during her term of office.

We all wish Janet well during her term of office and  in her ambassadorial role for Gathurst Golf Club.

Message from The Captain, Jim Wall

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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