Dear Member,

I’d like to share an update on our summer course maintenance and the encouraging progress in recovering areas impacted by the recent drought.

We’ve now completed summer maintenance on greens, tees, approaches, and fairways across all three courses, as well as the practice areas. While the weather presented challenges, the return of much-needed rain following a record-breaking drought from March to mid-July has been invaluable. Recovery across the course has been better than anticipated, although full grass coverage in these primary areas will still require a little more time.

You may have noticed that the roughs have thinned or lost grass entirely in some areas. These are either beyond our irrigation reach or were excluded from watering to remain within our abstraction licence – factors that will be reduced or removed when additional water is hopefully secured. The work to begin the recovery from drought is already well underway, and the experiences from past droughts have enabled us to be fast out of the blocks.

Now that our primary maintenance programme is complete, we will be using two weekday closures each week to continue focusing on restoring these areas. This process involves scarifying to remove dead grass, hollow coring to improve water infiltration, overseeding to re-establish turf, and fertilising to encourage healthy growth.

Greens, tees, approaches, and most fairways are already responding strongly. The fairway sand slits, while recovering slowly, are doing so better than expected, and we’re excited to see their positive impact over the winter. Heavily damaged fairway sections should recover over the next 6–8 weeks, while the roughs will take longer likely until the end of September or later due to the extent of the drought impact and the time required for new grass to establish.

I’m also pleased to report that the riverbank erosion work on Garden 4 has now been successfully completed, protecting this area of the course from further erosion in the years ahead.

Thank you again for your patience, understanding, and ongoing support during this recovery period. Your encouragement is greatly appreciated as we work towards restoring the course to its best.