Meet Tim Vegt – New Course Superintendent.

Hello All Members,

My Name is Tim and I’m the newly appointed Superintendent here at Yering Meadows. I’m 31 and I have spent over 10 years in the industry working at various clubs. I just wanted to give you all a quick background of myself for everyone to have an idea of my experiences in Turf Management.

I started my career as an apprentice at Heidelberg Golf Club under the Superintendent Clint Raven who is now at Yarra Yarra Golf Club. I spent 3 years at Heidelberg GC having to learn quickly on all turf equipment which included Spraying on all surfaces within a small team.

After 3 years I made the move to Peninsula Kingswood Golf Club where I had been for 7 years until November this year.

I was drawn to the fact they were going through construction and they had brought across Glenn Stuart who had previously been employed at Metropolitan Golf Club.

My early time at Peninsula Kingswood Golf Club was an integral part of the construction phase and growing in stages of the project on the North Course, where I was able to build on my skills within turf management.

As the years went on, I was able to climb my way up to a foreman’s position, and then Assistant Superintendent for 3 years. During this time, I’ve been able to build on my team management skills having to coordinate over 30 team members every day, which included training them on various tasks and equipment.

In my time at Peninsula Kingswood Golf Club, I was sent on numerous team leadership courses and short stay tournament preparation periods. Which includes President’s Cup at Royal Melbourne GC, the New Zealand Open at Millbrook Golf Resort in Queenstown and the Sandbelt Invitational for the past 3 years at Peninsula Kingswood Golf Club.

I hope this gives you a quick overview of me and my career so far, which I’ll be able bring here to Yering Meadows GC.

I look forward to meeting you all 

Tim

General Notes – John Sloan

With the change in personnel on the golf course all management practices are currently under review. Changes are and will be happening, some more noticeable than others, some than will take time to implement and others that will have an immediate impact. The overriding aim is to vastly improve the playing experience at Yering Meadows both in the short, medium and longer term. Some of these improvements will require structural change to the golf course, which are being addressed in the Course Design Masterplan, however the main aim of course management is on improving the presentation of the golf course.     

At this time of year there are many areas of the management of the golf course which compete for resource allocation. Weather conditions are favourable for turfgrass growth and a great many hours are expended just to keep the golf course and its immediate environment cut and groomed. Our central focus is on the improvement of playing surfaces, in particular the greens. Whilst there are fundamental structural issues with the greens, mainly high levels of thatch, management practices will centre around improvement in plant health, correct irrigated water applications and regular soil/sand dusting to smooth putting surfaces.

Yering Meadows Bunkers – Michael Clayton

Our role as golf course architects is to address the course architecture. The role of the bunkers is clearly one of the critical issues especially considering the perception the course is extremely difficult for average players.

Important is our view difficult golf is not always good golf and ‘easy’ golf done well is not in any way deficient.

The West Course at Royal Melbourne is one of the easiest courses in the city for a bogey player to play bogey golf – and it’s also one of the best handful of courses in the world.

It achieves this with wide fairways and making it easy to play away from the trouble better players need to challenge if they are to break par.

Clearly there are lessons to be learned from the principles making Royal Melbourne great and Yering Meadows can be a lot more playable for bogey golfers, (most players at every club) more fun and at the same time, a noticeably improved course.

The bunkers are both a maintenance problem and a design question.

Clearly, they need to be drained properly and turned into functional hazards.

It is clear there is the potential to make better and more interesting golf by both reducing the number of bunkers and properly managing the vegetation which on so many holes has encroached across playing lines.

In our view there are far too many bunkers serving no useful purpose.

The wise approach is to determine which bunkers are strategically interesting and add to the golf and which are simply penal hazards punishing the poorest shots of the higher handicappers.

There are three examples on the front nine we can use to highlight the point.

At the 1st hole the fairway bunker is on the inside corner of the dogleg – where it would traditionally be on any course influenced by Royal Melbourne’s architect, Alister MacKenzie – but the green is orientated from right to left with a bunker across the front left of the green. The easiest line in for second shot line is from as far from the fairway bunker as possible. This makes no sense.

The second example of extraneous bunkering is at the par 5, 8th where there is a fairway bunker between the water and the fairway.

Surely the water is enough of a hazard on the hole? The finest hole in the city to illustrate the principle is the 16th at Commonwealth.

Our suggestion will likely all the drive bunkers are removed.

Finally, the 9th hole is one making perfect strategic sense.

It turns to the left around drive bunkers on the inside (left corner) and the greenside bunkers cover the right half the green. This is the exact arrangement of the great 17th at Royal Melbourne, one copied at the 2nd at Spring Valley and Metropolitan’s 15th hole.

The closer the drive to the bunkers the better the line and the further away to the right the drive the more onerous the second shot.

Our coming plan will discuss these questions and cover all 27 holes. Until then, our suggestion would be to wait and then address the recommendations.

John Sloan’s report is linked to these brief comments and we both understand it is critically important to repair the bunker left of the par three, 3rd hole and the bunker in front of the 14th green.

With the new superintendent starting work in the weeks before Christmas this problem will be immediately addressed.