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On a day to day basis we are seeing a number of alarming issues on the golf course that are worryingly becoming more and more common place. The two issues that are of most concern are the non-repairing of pitchmarks and the bunkers not being raked following play from them. Both of these are a conscious decision and need to be addressed immediately. A perfect example of this was seen Monday morning when the greens-staff were out setting up the golf course.

On Saturday morning, following overnight snow, sleet and frost, play commenced on winter greens but as conditions changed through the day, and ahead of the winter league competition, the back 9 main greens were brought back into play. Despite this decision being made to allow golfers at least 50% of their round to be on main greens the pro-shop staff were still subjected to some unnecessary comments from members. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t! The weather stayed favourable into Sunday and so the full the course, and the main greens, were in play.

The most notable point to be made is that throughout all of Sunday’s play we only had three visitors, all of whom were members guests, so nearly all of the footfall was that of members (I raise this point as the finger is always pointed at visitors but this is clearly not the case). It is therefore of grave concern that on Monday morning we encountered shocking levels of pitchmarks and un-raked bunkers. This not only has a detrimental impact on the condition/playability of these areas but also leads to time being spent by greens-staff rectifying these situations that could be better used on other areas of the golf course.