Welcome to Belvoir Park Golf Club. I'm Aaron Small, I'm the Course Manager.
I've been here for nearly four years now, and it's a thriving Golf Club.
We have over twelve hundred Members for an eighteen hole course, which is a lot
so there's a lot of demand on the greenkeepers to
keep the course in the condition that the Members deserve and expect, really.
Ah, we'd average around forty five thousand rounds a year, which is a lot of traffic so
we have to be very conscious of everything we do, programmes wise, to make sure the course is in the condition
that we expect.
Tomorrow is our Scratch Cup, Scratch Cup is one of the big events, where people come from other Golf Courses
so it's a good opportunity for us to showcase the golf course, not only for our Members
but Visitors. The average handicap would be anything from Scratch, to a plus figure, probably three to four handicap, so
good field of golfers, and it's a good opportunity as greenkeepers to showcase what we do
day in, day out! Ah, we really like feedback from any golfer , but if we can please the
Category One Golfers, that would be good for us, as that's the Tournament, the biggest Tournament that we would have.
We can run maybe three to four Competitions like this a year
where your Scratch Cup, maybe you GUI event,
just competitions that let us keep the Golf Course for certain things,
because the golf course can't always be a "ten out of ten".
The weather would dictate that to you. Competitions would dictate that, but for Tournaments you definitely do prep,
you do more overtime, the Club has budget for doing the overtime, so there's no real excuses from us
as greenkeepers. The only thing that'll beat us is the weather!
Today, we have the Club Championship, and the Scratch Cup. And people talk about Tournament prep - so -
golfers would really think that Tournament prep is that morning.
Tournament prep starts weeks in advance, preparing your greens,
of what nutrients etc. you're giving them, feeding tees, feeding aprons, so
it's all a process that's done for the Tournament
and still give the Members their everyday use on the Golf Course.
All Tournaments, what we're doing is cutting more, y'know aggressively so the stripes stand out, things like that.
Y'know, golfers think that it's just somebody does it at night time
and they don't know who does the work. But the greenkeepers do it, and they're very passionate about it. They work in all conditions.
The thing about our job is, that, we're only really as good as the weather,
ahhh, you know we have no control over our biggest element,
which is the weather. So if we could turn the heat on , and the rain on , and everything else, the wind, whenever we wanted it
we would - yes - give you a better golf course. But that's determined by the weather
and really the golfers, how many golfers are out, and Staffing issues would determine how good the golf course is.
But generally, the greenkeepers round the country try their hardest - and they're very passionate about what they do.
So the greens are cut today for the Tournament , at 3 millimetres in height.
This is the standard height for us in the summer
We're on a programme of every two weeks we will give the greens a liquid feed
consisting of premow and seaweed, and just nitrogen phosphate and potassium just for the health of the plant.
We have two granular feeds a year, at the start of the season and the end
just to get a bit of body into them so that means that we have stuff to work with
and then the liquid feed will trickle feed the plant, so it's really getting everything that it needs
on a consistent basis and that allows us to cut the greens to that height.
and really give the surfaces that the Members of Belvoir expect here,
and need from day to day,
And this is how we measure green speed. We measure it with a stimpmeter, so basically
we go to a flat area of the green, and we do it both ways to counteract any undulations on the green.
so if the ball averages twelve foot one way, and eight foot the other way, then
you add it together, which is twenty, divide it by two, which is ten -
your greens are running at ten on the stimp.
You hear a lot of people talking about stimpmeters.
All stimpmeters are is generic throughout the world. You can take this information from any course.
And that's how they do it.
So the greens here at the minute are ten, and that's without a roll
so that's quite quick, so we'll see what they are after a roll.
So we're gonna stimp the green here now after speed rolling it, to see how much speed the speed roller has put on it.
So we come to the same spot,
here we are, three balls again,
get our average,
so we're eleven foot three inches
We'll go back the other way now.
So, we're bang on ten foot. So that's twenty one foot three inches. So . . . .
About ten and a half, ten point six?
So the speed roller has put another half a foot onto those
without us having to lower the height of cut, which is the main thing
so the plant's not under stress.
But you don't do that too much, because that creates compaction.
So it's a good tool for the greenkeepers, but not to be overused.