The Member Consultation Group comprising Nick Duncan, Les Thorne, Lynne Cowser, Elaine Capp and Robert Doley has been busy talking with numbers of members about Honorary Membership, gaining a detailed understanding of current attitudes to this award. Research into the subject has also extended beyond AGC, talking in detail with several other local clubs about their policies and processes.

In particular the Group has been keen to learn from members their attitude to the criteria for making such an award, both mandatory and optional, and particularly important how the nomination and approval processes should be structured.

Many members have been keen to offer their views on the subject, and we now have an emerging impression of how to advance our strategic thinking on this subject.

The Group is meeting again in May to fine tune its conclusions, and will present detailed recommendations to the Management Commitment for their meeting at the end of the month.

Nick Duncan

On behalf of  ‘Honorary Membership’ Consultation Group

The course is waking up!

As we move away from winter rules, we can look forward to the golf season warming up, hopefully in more ways than one. A big thank you to those members who are came out early for divot filling and those who are here late covering greens in an attempt to keep the rook damage away from the greens.

Congratulations to Steve Pratt for winning Linnets, the two-day ‘Alresford Major’ over the Easter weekend, with a combined medal score of 137, just pipping Kelly Travers into 2nd place.

I would like to thank the Vets and Ladies sections for juggling recent intra club events mindful of the fact that many more of our members now have the ability to play golf midweek. Their reorganising ensured more tee times were available to the wider membership than in previous years. This is a fine balancing act where we respect the tradition of certain events, keeping the ‘personality’ of our members club but recognise the dynamics of our membership is changing – at quite a rapid pace.

Following the Management Committee’s request to the Captains Committee (CapCom) to consider alternatives that would allow greater and more efficient use of unused tee times, Capcom have recommended we enter a trial period where any unused midweek 4-ball tee booking slots can be taken by visitors at any time during the tee time allocation. However, these slots can only be booked within a maximum 72hrs (3 days) notice, giving members ample opportunity to book their golf. Furthermore, members guests can now play before the 10:30am with the same 72hrs notice. Both of these bookings can be done through the Pro Shop or office – not via ClubV1. We will monitor the usage over the coming months.

Members who play between midday and 2pm will be aware we conducted a month-long survey in February on whether tee bookings should be extended to 2pm midweek as it is at the weekends. The results suggest 65% would like the Open Tees to continue from midday. So no change to our current tee booking format.

As you see from our General Manager’s notes below, we continue to have a healthy flow of new members over all categories. I would like to stress to existing members to be welcoming should you have a new face join your playing group. Some will need initial General Play rounds to get their golf handicaps off the ground. Please do your bit to help.

Finally, our course marshals have been in action now buggies are allowed back on the course after the very wet March. I have received super upbeat feedback on this initiative, from both members and visiting societies. I particularly appreciate the positive attitude from our members as I’m sure the marshals do to. More volunteers are required, so if you attended the training, please add your name to the online schedule. If you missed the training but now appreciate, and can add to the great benefit of marshals, let David know you would like to join in. The more the merrier and remember to support those who support you.

Simon Freemantle

Captain

Results

As a reminder a Live Clubhouse leaderboard for each competition is always available through HowDidIDo on the day.  Once the competition is closed by a Committee member the “snapshot” results are automatically published to the Member Hub.  If a member is looking for the complete results, together with the additional comments provided by the Committee (including reasons for disqualification), then these can be found via HowDidIDo:

From the main menu, select “Home Club”, from here there are 2 tiles available “Ladies Results” or “Men’s Results.  Mixed results are available under either of these 2 tiles.  Scroll to locate the competition and select to find the detailed results and comments.

Competition Entry Fees/Prize Payments

Some competitions breakeven, some make a loss on some make a profit after prize payments have been made.  This income is spent on updating Honours Boards and purchase of glassware mementos.  Whilst the Clubhouse has undergone refurbishment there has not been any expenditure on updating the Honours Boards and during this period, this income has been set aside for the purchase of new competition honours boards.  Funds for 2023 will also be used for the purchase of the new Honours Boards within the current project timescales.

The C&H Committee is very conscious that with increased membership and therefore competition entries that the current prize structure needs review and a small working group has been set up to review the current structure to ensure that there is a balance of prize payments for all levels of handicaps any recommendations will be implemented for 2024.

Reminder – Marker

A polite reminder from the C&H Committee for all players to clearly identify their marker on their scorecard – a signature is not always eligible!  Many thanks

Club Championship

24^th & 25^th June 2023

All 7 day members should now have received Terms of Competition and Entry details for our Club Championship.  This document together with the Club Championship Policy are available on the Club’s website.

Places for the Championship are limited, and it is important that all players, regardless of handicap, register their intent to play in the Championship prior to the closing date (30^th May).  Please note that men with a handicap index of 13.1 or above (on 30^th May) will need to play in at least one qualifying event.

Saturday 20^th May – Men’s Medal

Saturday 3^rd June – Men’s Medal

Saturday 10^th June – Laming Cup

Men’s Invitation

11^th June 2023

Entry for the Men’s Invitation on 11^th June 2023 is now open.

The format of the competition will be AM: (12 holes) Greensomes, followed by PM: (18 holes) 4BBB.  Entry Cost is £72 per pair and includes coffee on arrival, lunch and 2 course dinner and prizes.

Entry is open to 7 day members and their guest with a WHS Handicap, guests without a WHS Handicap are welcome to enter but will not be eligible for main prizes.

Please enter via the Member’s Hub, [bookable competitions] “Men’s Invitation 2023 SIGN UP only”.  The entry fee will be charged at the time of booking via credit/debit card.

Gill Freemantle

Chair Competitions & Handicap Committee, Handicap Secretary

handicaps@alresfordgolf.co.uk

Once again the weather had an adverse impact on our weekly rollups but there was one bright spot, in the first rollup in April George Skayman had a Hole-in-One on the 6’th hole, well done George! George, well known for his playing of the flugelhorn at club events, is not a stranger to having holes-in-one and the latest was number four in his golfing career. His previous hole-in-one on the 13th in 2021 occurred in a Qualifying Competition and he received a Boss watch for his efforts, this time he simply received the congratulations of his rollup colleagues and a bar bill.

The golfing season seems barely to have started but already we have played eight of our summer friendly matches. Since the last edition of Fore Info we have played Corhamption (H) 4/3 Win, Waterlooville (H) 4/3 Win, Sandford Springs (A) 3.5/2.5 Win, Lee on the Solent (H) 3.5 each Draw, Stoneham (H) 4.5/1.5 Win, Farnham Sands (A) 4.5/3.5 Win and Rowlands Castle (A) 2.5/4.5 Loss. By now we should have played nine matches but the last match in April away at Hockley was abandoned due to a thunderstorm. Roll on summer…..

So our current record is 4 wins, 2 losses and 1 draws, a very creditable performance. Probably the best result was the win at Farnham Sands where the Farnham Captain mentioned that they hardly ever lose at home, well done Ed Tinley (Match Captain) and team. The return match at Alresford in August should be interesting with Farnham out for revenge. The win against Sandford Springs was also noteworthy considering the age advantage of their team – the minimum qualification age for their “Seniors” is just 55 years of age!

May is another busy month in the vets calendar with matches against the Army, Bramshaw, Barton on Sea and more. We play some great courses and have a good time with likeminded Vets/Seniors from other clubs. If you would like to play with us in the summer friendly matches please sign up for selection either on ClubV1 or the Vets Noticeboard.

Vets Captain

Steve Oldham

As I write this on St Georges Day (Happy St Georges Day!) I note that temperatures today should reach a high of 14 degrees and should fall no lower than 5 degrees. Hopefully, this is the beginning of consistently warmer temperatures and good growing conditions! To say the weather has been mixed so far is an understatement, we only had 4mm of rain in February but had a whopping 147mm in March!

There has also been some wind which has caused small pieces of deadwood to fall from the trees this is nothing major but last weekend we lost a tree on our boundary by the thirteenth green. It had toppled over into the lane taking a fibre cable with it. Fortunately, we were able to call on our preferred tree surgeon who was able to deal with it immediately. He will be returning to the course before the end of April to remove a Beech tree which is no longer safe because of significant decay. We have monitored the tree for a number of years carrying out remedial work to prolong its life to this point.

With the warmer temperatures our course is starting to wake up from what seems like a long winter. Interestingly, our greens are always the last area to come together. This is because they hold lower soil temperatures, than other parts of the course, until day and night temperatures become more consistent. Greens will now get a liquid feed fortnightly and wetting agent and bio stimulants in between to keep them healthy. The greens on the third, tenth, eleventh and twelfth have had an extra input of granular fertiliser this recently to try and get them moving. In addition, aeration has been carried out in the form of a pencil solid tine. Top dressings will follow as the greens start to wake up. We have seen leather jacket activity recently and we are calling out for volunteers to lay the tarpaulins to try and bring them out (see members updates). We have also sprayed the insecticide on the greens this week to try to treat them.

The greens staff are undertaking our regular maintenance of our bunkers. The revet faces have been brushed and tidied on fourth, thirteenth and seventeenth holes and sand has redistributed. The greens staff will, from now on, check the sand depths against our standard as part of the daily routine.

Our tees and aprons are recovering well after a granular base feed, bare patches from winter play have been aerated over seeded and top dressed. A monthly liquid feed coupled with wetting agent will be applied moving forward. Our fairways are filling in well as the granular fertiliser starts to activate growth, footpath areas on 8,12 and 17 have been aerated over seeded and top dressed. We continue to repair the damage caused by rooks feeding on pests such as leather jackets rook damage with soil and seed and we will appreciate the help of members on the divot day to further address this – please give us your time there will be refreshment afterwards (see members update for details). Moving forward we will use an iron and urea-based nitrogen to keep the grass healthy. Hopefully, we will get a balance of warmth and showers through the summer months.

If you have not seen David Attenborough’s “Wild Isles” programme on the BBC I can recommend it. I found the episode on our native grasslands particularly interesting, it emphasised to me how carefully we need to balance the management of our native grassland with our woodland. We are a chalk downland (grassland) course with some pockets of mature woodland. The greens staff have now cut down all long rough areas and now some re shaping will be carried out to bring the long rough out to bunkers and enhance the downland look as the grass start to grow. We should now start to see the emergence of some wildflowers coming through.

The 2022/23 winter projects are nearing completion. The fifth tee has now been cylinder mown at a height of 15mm and will be kept at this height for a week before we go to a 10mm cut with a top dressing. Conditions permitting the tee should be open mid may. The green side swale on the first hole is now open to play. The shorter mown area will be an extension to the apron but for the time being will be cut with the fairway mower and will receive top dressing to blend it in. It will, however, be some time before it has the playability of the sixteenth swale for example. The greens staff will continue to make good bare areas, and this should pick up when we get consistent growing temperatures. We will also fertilise these areas.

Derek Myers

Chair of Greens