Winter rules have been introduced earlier than normal due to the varied weather we’ve become accustomed to this year.

As many of you know Littlestone has a climate that is slightly different to the rest of this corner of the South East of England. One of the beauties of golf at Littlestone is we miss a fair proportion of the rain  that hits the South East, but this also has it’s down side. Most of our fairway growth is during March and April, but unfortunately we had no rain from the 2^nd week in March until the 3^rd week in June.

Fairways.

The program of over seeding is working extremely well, and we will continue to protect these areas throughout the Winter.

Please can I thank you all for disturbing these areas as little as possible.

Greens.

During this winter the greens will be cut to 4.5mm. This will a gradual change over the next couple of months from the 3.5mm we have at present.

Tees.

The men’s 17^th tee will be levelled and re-turfed and the steps replaced, once work commences we will use the old Yellow Low Tee, which has been re-instated for this purpose.

Following all the positive comments from members and visitors alike after last winter’s use, the old original tee at the 8^th will be levelled and re-turfed this Winter. It will give us the option in the coming years to have extra teeing ground on the 8^th.

We have reverted to using the White Tee at the 7^th hole, due to excessive wear on the walk off from the Blue Tee to the fairway.  The gorse on the mounds to the right of the fairway have been pruned to enable a clear view of the 13^th tee. This pruning was more severe than we intended due to large sections of dead gorse. The greens committee are considering various options to possibly replacing the White Tee.

Bunkers.

Weekend bunker raking by staff has now ceased and will not resume until the Spring. This makes it more important that members and visitors spend time raking after their visit into the sand.

John G Young

Chairman of Greens