Head Professional – Recruitment

Captains and the Management Committee, together with the Club Secretary, met with three final candidates for the position of Head Professional at Alresford, who were then interviewed by a Sub-Group who have been responsible for the recruitment process.

All three candidates are excellent PGA Professionals with impressive backgrounds and knowledge of the game. The Sub-Group will meet again shortly to consider the next steps in appointing a new Head Professional to start at the Club on November 1^st.

Covid Affected Golf

Recently; the Club enabled tee bookings on consecutive days for members as patterns of play showed capacity to do so. We can now see that there is regular capacity in the afternoons on all days of the week, therefore the Club can start to accept guests introduced by members. This will be restricted to the less-busy times of the day, as proven in the tee booking data, and each member will only be able to bring one pre-booked guest and pay in the Pro shop as usual. Again; this is the start of enabling members to bring a guest to initially test capacity and then review impact.

Bar and Catering Facilities

The bar area will re-open on 4^th July on a trial basis. This will be a test to see whether it is possible to run the bar and comply with the guidelines for social distancing. We all have to be totally respectful of the well-being of our staff, who may be serving a hundred people each day. There will be explicit rules for use of the bar, which can only be used AFTER you have played your pre-booked round of golf. The bar is not open for casual use and is not available to you before your round of golf.

Bar staff will have a copy of the starters’ tee sheet, and it is only those people on the tee sheet that will be permitted to use the bar for a limited amount of time.

This is an initial, first step in re-opening the facilities. In the same manner that the Club re-introduced use of the course; there will be number of well-managed steps to take. We ask that all members understand the

need for small, manageable steps in the gradual re-opening of bar and catering facilities.

Finance

The Club is indebted to Ray Panter, Chair of Finance, for his forensic management of our finances as a result of Covid-19 and during the period that the Club has furloughed staff. Ray presented a forecast to the Management Committee for the rest of the financial year through to end of September 2020. Ray’s actions on costs, coupled with David’s work with suppliers and the local council, helped to arrest any unnecessary spending. To make up for some of our lost income from green fees and golf societies; the Club recruited 93 new members since March this year, taking us back to healthy member numbers not seen since the 2012 as there was a gradual decline through to 2018.

Despite having lost £135,000 of budgeted income this year, as a result of Covid-19, Ray has been able to forecast a near ‘break-even’ year; which is a remarkable outcome for the Club. I hope that this will give all members confidence in the Club’s excellent financial health and competency of the Management Committee as a whole in bringing agile decisions to safeguard and improve our wonderful golf club.

Volunteers

We continue to be blessed with a very large number of volunteer starters who are managing golfers at the first tee for nearly 12 hours every day, seven days each week. How lucky we are to have so many committed members motivated to help the rest of us play some golf? Without the volunteer starters we would have great difficulty in keeping the course open. If you have a few hours; do volunteer yourself by contacting the Club Secretary, or even swap one of your intended golfing sessions to join the amazing rank of volunteers. My thanks and respect go out to all volunteers helping the rest of us to get some golf in.

Enjoy the course, and ‘play nicely’ in the bar when it opens, so that we can expand facilities when possible.

Robert White

Chairman of the Management Committee

• Handicap (DQ if missing, or too high)
• Date
• Marker’s Name (printed please)
• Players signature (DQ if missing)
• Gross Scores of Player and the player’s Marker

Handicap Changes

A question I’ve been asked recently is “I played really well in the last competition, but the result isn’t out yet, what handicap should I play off and put on my card?”  In order avoid a possible disqualification for playing off too high a handicap, the player must make a reduction to his/her playing handicap using the CSS if known, otherwise the SSS to calculate the reduction. If you don’t know your exact handicap the reduction should be made from your playing handicap less 0.5. Alternatively, you can find out your exact handicap using the ClubV1 Members App.

Unfortunately, you might say, this doesn’t work the other way round. You are not allowed to self-adjust your handicap upwards. If your handicap is likely to go up, you must wait until the results are published before playing with a higher handicap.

Course Etiquette

As currently there are no visitors or Golf Societies, the only players who are not repairing pitch marks on the greens must be members. If you want to play on well maintained, smooth greens then you have to do your bit and repair any pitch marks you see on the greens – even professionals repair their own pitch marks. If you’ve just flighted a ball onto the green, go looking for the pitch mark!

In a similar vein, the players who are making no attempt to smooth out their footprints in bunkers are members. As there are currently no rakes in the bunkers it would be a courtesy to other players, if as you exit from the bunker, to smooth the sand over where you have been with your club or your foot.

George Clelland

Question.

A ball when lifted under the rules may always be cleaned

… … … … with four exceptions.

Can you state the four exceptions?

I feel sure you will agree that the course looks fantastic at the moment and continues to play superbly well. It definitely benefitted from the spell of rain we had mid-month. Every month I seem to offer thanks to our greens staff for the terrific job they do week in, week out. This month is no exception. So thanks again to Simon and all the Team!

A bit of a moan though, aimed at the members. I played recently and was disappointed by the state in which a number of bunkers had been left. Shoe prints all over.

I urge all members to take greater responsibility during these “no rake” times for ensuring that the bunkers are left in a reasonable condition after they have been played out of.

Well, that’s about it for this month. I very much look forward to the bar and kitchen being allowed to re-open shortly … … and to having a thirst-quenching pint after a round in the summer sunshine!

Ed Tinley

• Secondly why are Members not taking their own rubbish home with them? Somebody completely emptied their golf bag of all rubbish in the Range the other day! Nice.

The Greens Committee was also exasperated at the lack of effort made by Members on ‘exiting’ a bunker, therefore proposed to Mancom that all Members MUST carry a rake. This was endorsed so you have until 14^th July to be suitably equipped. Other Clubs have implemented similar policies as we have no indications on the horizon of being able to put back the normal rakes. Amazon and E-Bay have stocks and children’s rakes also work very well.

We have not caught any chafer beetles yet! The traps will stay in place for a little while before being removed.  Our staff have been doing very well with not needing to apply fungicide. This is achieved by using alternative treatments with a fairly significant financial saving also being achieved. HOWEVER, we now have had some anthracnose showing its ugly head on 12; 13; 15 & 16. This is a summer disease which thrives on dry weather with constant warmth which we have had through May and June. It’s just about to be treated with fungicide and then feed to try to grow out the problem!

The Greens are down to the summer height of 3.5mm and the target green speeds are regularly being hit. Do read our website for more information about green speeds.

Now all the trees are fully in leaf we can more clearly see the extent of Ash Dieback.

As you look at the top of the tree you can clearly see bare spikey branches lacking in leaves.

Look on the right hand side of the 7th fairway; at the back of the 12^th tee and at the end of the copse between the 15^th tee and 14^th green.

The trees are being tagged and recorded and, so far, can all be dealt with by our staff in Winter. Generally speaking other trees are close by so should thrive and fill in the gaps.

The new bunkers on the 4^th and 13^th are “on trial” as they are of a different construction to others, which means they should last much longer. Whereas the 5^th fairway bunker is more traditional and will therefore only last around 5 years before the membrane in the floor needs replacing.

The trial ones look very pretty, but we are in the process of rethinking them in terms of depth, especially for access by golfers who might be a little bit wobbly on their pins!

So, for Greenside bunkers, it’s an ongoing exercise, but the picture of the 13^th greenside bunker back in 2003 reveals how far we have progressed already.

Numerous attempts have been made to germinate grass, particularly where stumps were ground out in the Winter. Where they are very much “in play”, they will be marked as GUR with white paint. This is to help them recover, not make your shot easier!

If you remember we cut the grass lower in the swale on the right hand side of the 16^th green. This was slightly more work, plus then became more vulnerable to damage and certainly needed more water.

Disappointingly, as we received zero feedback from Members that was either positive or negative, the grass height will revert to the same as the other swales.

HAPPY GOLFING!

Bob Moore
Chair of Greens Committee

Answer.

1. To see if the ball is damaged (cut or cracked).                                Rule 4.2c
2. To Identify it. (Can be cleaned only as needed to identify it.)         Rule 7.3
3. Because it interferes with play.                                                       Rule 15.3b
4. To see if it lies in a condition where relief is allowed.                    Rule 16.4

celebrating the Golf Club Centenary during the year 1990.  One of our members involved in setting up and running the 100 Club from the very beginning was Robin Good. Over time he became a Trustee overseeing what items the fund purchased right through until recently in October 2018 when he stood down along with fellow long-serving Trustee David Farr – so over 30 years involvement with the 100 Club.  A remarkable achievement.  

Robin also played a part in the centenary celebrations as a member of the Centenary Committee. Having joined Alresford Golf Club in 1976 he served as Club Captain in 1983.

The Ladies’ Captain in the year of the Centenary was Robin’s wife Jennifer who is still a regular visitor in the Clubhouse on Tuesdays even though we no longer see her on the course.

If anyone is interested in knowing a little about the origins of the 100 Club then check out this section in the June 2019 FORE Info on the members section of the club website.  Alternatively contact me – details below.

Pat Wallis – 01420 564417 or peterpat51@outlook.com

Pat Wallis