UPDATE FROM GOLF COURSE MANAGER CRAIG TIDMARSH

Dear Abbey Member 

Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t been in our favour over the last few weeks having had a lot of rainfall. Combined with the extremely mild temperatures we also experienced around new year this has led to an outbreak of fungal disease on the greens called Fusarium​.
The Fusarium fungus resides in the thatch of the green and is always present. You can’t exclude thatch and nor would you want to. Naturally occurring thatch at an appropriate depth provides a natural resilience which contributes to the speed and consistency of play. It also acts as a singularly significant ‘recycling bin’ for natural nutrients (including nitrogen), released from decomposing organic matter and returned to the living grass plant tissue through the fibrous root system. So, Fusarium requires constant monitoring and control. It is always there on every golf green waiting to strike! Due to the recent climatic conditions, there has been an aggressive attack across the country.
The cure is the successful application of chemicals which we use every year to manage this disease as best we can.It is important to note that the disease is always present, it lives in the thatch of the green. It happens every year, (rarely to the extent we currently have) it just needs to be managed carefully. We sprayed four times last year (costing £3000) however, changing regulations regarding active ingredients mean the fungicides we use are not as powerful as they used to be.We are planning to over seed early spring which will help recovery and I can assure the greens willimproveandfully recover during the spring.

In the mean time we will keep the greens cut as short as is possible for this time of year (as long as weather allows us to get machinery out). This will obviously help keep a smoother putting surface.  Our mower blades are currently being re-sharpened which will help further improve the cut.
As you know there is currently a trolley ban in place to help keep the course open as much as we can. This is the same situation at the majority of local courses (with some remaining closed). With drier weather forecast it hopefully won’t be long before we can allow trollies out again but we will continue to assess conditions daily and update you as regularly as possible. 

Craig & the grounds team