We are now Into September and the main golfing season will soon come to an end. We have a busy Winter schedule ahead of us, more on this later.

The week before the Open, I was fortunate enough to visit Turnberry.  I spent the day with course manager George Brown, who was retiring after the Open having spent 26 years in charge of the links and Euan Grant, his replacement, who had come from The Old Course at St Andrews via Machrihanish Dunes, it was great to walk the fairways and greens and see what was involved.

Back home at Hesketh we have continued our programme of minimum input fertiliser application, very similar to that of Turnberry's plans, and it was great to see the philosophy that "green is not always great" being applied at The Open. The easiest thing in the world is to spray every couple of weeks to keep a dark green uniform look, but this is not "links golf", this could be used in parkland golf, like Sunningdale, or for hiding a multitude of errors and blemishes.

  We are continuing to Top-dress and verti-cut on a regular basis and the composition of the surfaces are steadily improving, with more fescues being visible, we have over-seeded a number of greens, and we have solid tined all greens, we are doing a few at a time to prevent your golf from being affected on every hole, however this may result in the greens not always being consistent throughout, however this will soon be rectified.

The "black medal" earlier in the season,  seemed popular for most with the weather being very kind apart from the odd shower, I wonder whether there would have been so many good scores had the wind got up, the idea behind these tees, as previously stated, is to create a tougher course, which makes the category one player think of not only his drive but also his second shot.

The majority of the long rough has now died back at the bases presenting us with a more favourable "wispyness", the plan for next season is to setup the course in April and keep it this way for the whole season, all ideas and comments are gratefully received.

This Winter we have some major improvements ahead which will benefit Hesketh for the future, these include the 3^rd surround and 15^th green, this may cause some disruption to Winter play, but the benefits will be visible next season and for years to come. Also this Winter there will be a number of bunker upgrades and a couple of tees in need of levelling and resurfacing, this combined with constant aeration, returfing bare areas, tree felling, pond clearing and drainage work, will certainly keep us busy.

The green complex at 15 will be my highlight over the Winter period, the design has now been on display in the mixed lounge for some time, with all comments I have received in the whole favourable, if I were a member, I'd also be asking for guarantees that the finished product will improve the hole, I can assure you that the finished product will raise the standards for all future improvements at Hesketh.

Although I do not wish to dwell on the past, I feel it necessary to point out the number of poor areas on the course in need of improvement, these are too numerous to mention, with the yellow tint of poor design and construction shining for all to see, we intend over the next few years to rectify these and with the help of the machines on site during the 15^th reconstruction we may be able to tackle more this year than first envisaged, I have to point out that although some of the impoverished areas are hard on the eye, they have no comparison to hitting quite a good second shot at 15 and ending up on the dirt (as there is very little grass there)to the right hand side, many hours of planning and assessing the course has led us to the 15^th and with the assistance of Scott and his team we feel the 15^th takes priority.

In the not too distant past we held "the shindig in the shed", with over 100 people attending,  the night was a great success, even if the dancing left a little to be desired, on the night we took over £3000 pounds, with most of this going to charity (after paying for the band, food etc). I would personally like to thank all involved, Carol and the rest of the bar-staff, who gave up their time to work for free, Mrs Melville and The Captain for all the efforts they put in the week leading up to the ceilidh, Mrs Berry and Mrs Wright for the graffiti and comedy the night before, Phil and wee Dave on the greens-team and Mr Madden, who helped clear the shed and set up the tables/chairs and Dance floor , Karen for providing a lovely meal as well as arranging everything, Scott for running the auction and of course caretaking Chris who not only helped set everything up and put everything away, was kind enough to wake me up the following morning to tidy up, all in all it was a great night and thanks to everyone who attended.

Please keep your comments coming and remember, with Winter on it's way,If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.
(Lee Trevino).

Cheers

Peter...