The Ladies Section held their traditional Spring Meeting on Monday 14 April. The day is more of a getting together day after the bleakness of winter with all the ladies turning up in bright spring colours. The weather was equally supportive providing them with a lovely spring day.

27 ladies, a mixture of members from both the Kings and the Jubilee course, took part. The golf format was a team game with Nina Kinsella, Jackie Scollen and Jane Hatfield taking the winners accolade. Sue Britten, Wendy Buck and Chris Wakeling came second. Third place went to Caroline Crisp, Chris Astridge and Sun Ha Soh.

(L to R) - Nina Kinsella, Jackie Scollen, Kathy Lane (Ladies Captain) and Jane Hatfield.

There were two nearest the pin prizes went to Jackie Scollen and Elaine Atkin.

A group of ladies taking time out on the course

During the round the ladies also completed a quiz questionnaire on plants and flowers. The winners here were Sue Britten, Wendy Buck and Chris Wakeling.

After the match the ladies enjoyed a lunch in the clubhouse.

Firstly, I hope you all had a great Easter break. We are now into the late spring early summer competitions and I would like to see you all supporting the golf section in all these events. They are for your enjoyment, and a lot of work goes on in the background to make these possible so please support them.

We have started our county competitions and at present we are doing extremely well with all teams playing some competitive golf. The Curry Cup team had a great first win along with the John Day team, The Jubilee Cup team where unfortunate to lose their first match but managed to get a draw I the 2nd match and are still in touching distance to move forward to the next stages. The Essex Seniors have started the season with 2 great wins, Firstly beating The Warren and following that up with an impressive win against Upminster.

Whilst all the teams are doing well the Team Captains are struggling to field teams, so please support them in our quest for a trophy this year.

Over recent weeks we have had issues with the course, but I can say that is now in great condition and a big thanks needs to be given to the green staff for their hard work.

Moving forward I hope you all have a great summer of golf and look forward to seeing you on the course.

Our Ladies section is looking forward to a busy Spring/Summer.

Our winter league and winter eclectic competitions are now complete. Thank you to everyone who entered. We are now looking forward to the summer knock out competition.

We would also like to encourage ladies to join our Harris Bowl team, it is a great way to play other courses and make new friends. If you are interested our Harris Bowl captain Caroline Crispin will guide you through and give you all the information required.

Our commiserations to Jo Stentiford and Sharon Warrington who were beaten by The Rayleigh Club in the 2nd round of the Daily Mail foursomes. A fantastic effort and well done for taking the match to the 17th

Our Spring meeting saw 25 ladies, Kings and Jubilee members enjoying a fun day of golf followed by lunch and prizes. This was followed by our Mixed Easter Bowl competition, with 40 ladies and gents signed up.

I would also like to express my thank to everyone who joined in and helped organise our recent charity Quiz Night raising an amazing £1050 for the Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund.

And finally, I would like to thank the Ladies committee for their continuous support and hard work, it really is appreciated.

The Spring Bowl was won by Gary Romang on an excellent 41 points and the First medals of the season were won by Dave Gordon in the Strokeplay and Darren Shilliam in the Stableford.

Our Jubilee cup team had a tough start to the season with a loss at Brentwood and a home draw against The Essex.

The Essex Senior team were victorious at home 6-5 against The Warren and move into round 2. In round 2 they played Upminster and recorded a convincing 7-4 win.

Our Curry Cup team had their first match at home to Benton Hall and won well 12-6.

A lot has happened since the last newsletter especially the inconsistent weather that has gone from very wet to very dry in a short space of time. This hasn’t helped with our efforts to get the courses ready for the playing season which is now in full swing.

The United Kingdom Growth Potential index (UKGP) which indicates the potential for growth has been sitting at 0.3 which is well below the 0.6 it needs to be at in order for grass to start growing. This is one of the reasons why the course has struggled to bounce back from the damage sustained over the wetter periods we had earlier in the year.

Thankfully the UKGP is increasing (it currently sits at 0.5) and is forecast to be at 0.6/0.8 next week. With this heightened potential for growth Paul and his Green staff will be applying the fairways with a feed, selective weed killer and growth regulator over the coming days.

Once these better conditions arrive the team will be switching their focus to cutting and I thought it would be useful to outline a few statistics regarding the process of cutting the courses.

There are 6 different heights that the course is cut to (each cut requiring a different mower) -

Tees are cut to 14mm.
Fairways are cut to19mm (this is the winter height and will remain slightly longer to give more coverage and extend life).
Semi roughs are cut to 30mm.
Green approachesare cut to 2mm (reduced from 15mm).
Greens are cut to 3.8mm (reduced from 4.2mm).
First cut roughs are cut to 45mm.
Second cut rougshs are cit to 78mm.

The time it takes and frequency at which the varying areas are cut is as follows -

Tees are cut twice a week and takes half a day per course.
Fairways are cut twice a week and takes two & half days for the Kings and one & one half days for the Jubilee.
Semi roughs are cut in conjunction with fairways.
Green approaches are cut twice a week and takes half a day per course.
Greens are cut daily and takes between 3.5 and 4 hours per course.
First Cut Roughs are cut once a week and takes two days for both courses.
Second Cut Roughs are cut once a week and takes 4 days for both courses.

Green renovations were scheduled to be carried out at the end of March on both courses however the Kings renovations were delayed by 9 days due to forecast rain that unfortunately didn’t materialise.

This delay was not ideal and was followed by particularly dry weather which also didn’t help. The UKGP index was low (which we alluded to above) and resulted in slow growth, fortunately we then got two heavy bouts of rain which did help. The increase in temperatures over the past few days and in the forecast now mean the greens are improving and will deliver the types of surfaces our golfers are looking for.

Sadly, back in January we lost our great friend and golfing partner Gary Willsmore. Known to all his friends as “Boom Boom “. Gary was a great mate to many and we had plenty of golf days away.

Gary Willsmore

The Sunday swindle that Gray loved and played with on a regular basis paid tribute to him on this day along with his family and his 2 daughters Jade & Shannon.

Jade joined in on the day by paying golf with the swindle in her dads' memory. The day was played in great spirit with 28 players all battling for the Gary Willsmore Memorial trophy, which was eventually won by Micky Johnson on count back from Richard Berry on 38pts.

Pat Phillips (R) with trophy winner, Micky Johnson and
Jade Willsmore.

Family and friends on the Jubilee course

Prizes were given on every hole on the day, and it was nice to see Jade drive the First Green in Gary’s memory and collect the prize for nearest the pin.

A big thank you for all those that attended and contributed to the collection raised to help the family through these difficult times and allowing us to install the lovely bench on the
first Tee at the Jubilee Course

This year, the men’s Club Championship will be played on the 28th June. The format of the competition will see some changes.

Players with a handicap of below 19 with play 18 holes of the Jubilee course in the morning followed by 18 holes on the Kings course in the afternoon. They will be playing Strokeplay with their combined scores counting..

Players with a handicap above 19 will play Stableford on the Kings course in the morning.

All players will play form the white tees.

Players will be playing in groups of 3 and buggies will be available on the day.

The trophies will be decided as follows –

Club Champion - Best Gross
J & B - Best Nett under 12 Handicap
Brent Walker - best nett under 18 handicap
Rabbits - Best Stableford over 18 holes for 19 handicap and above

We would like as many people to come to the club as possible on the 28th June, timings to be confirmed.

The plan is as this is the final day of club fortnight that we will present all the trophies from all the club championships played of the period and it would be great if we could have a big turn out to see the final groups coming down 18 on the kings and be present for the prize giving.

Our seniors have started their 2025 Essex Seniors Championship campaign, with visits to Ballards Gore & Stockbrook & a visit from The Burstead.

The first match was away at Ballards Gore on the 26th March, and though the course was in good condition, the golf from Three Rivers unfortunately didn’t match it. The result was a 6-2 win for Ballards Gore to carry into the return leg on 16th July.

For the second match, we welcomed The Burstead to Three Rivers. The Green Staff had done a lot of work on the course over the previous months, and our team didn’t let the club down. We ended with a 7-1 win, which again will be carried forward to the return leg at The Burstead on the 21st August.

Our third match was away against our sister club, Stockbrook Manor on the 9th April. With all bar 1 match being very close, we lost on the day 5½-2½. We will welcome Stockbrook to Three Rivers on the 28th May, where we hope to reverse that score.

We have matches coming up against Garons Park, Rochford Hundred and the start of our Triangular series in the next month.

You will soon be receiving information regarding two Guest Open days on Thursday 8th and Saturday 10th May.

On either day gives you the chance to invite a guest at zero cost and includes refreshments post round. If your guest chooses to join, they receive 14 months membership for the cost of 12 and the referring member will get a £50 or £75 top up to their levy card.

Our traditional Mixed Easter Bowl competition was played on Good Friday, the 18 April. The competition was a pairs competition with one lady and one man making up a team. This year 20 teams took part.

The weather also played it's part in a great day, a bit chilly to start but brighter as the day wore on.

Jane Hatfield (L), Ladies Captain kathy Lane (C) and ken Brown (R)

Christine and Mike Astridge with Lady Captain Kathy Lane (C)

After the match those taking part retired to the clubhouse foe refreshments while the score were collected and sorted. Jane Hatfield and Ken Brown, having the best Stableford score took the trophy and winner’s prizes.

Christine and Mike Astridge came in a close second a single point ahead of Caroline and John Turner.

Ken Brown and Sue Britten won the Nearest the Pin challenges.

Tuesday’s usually sees the lady members of the Kings course get together for a team game competition. Tuesday the 5th May however was a bit special; it was the 80th anniversary of V.E. Day. So the ladies turned it into a bit of a celebration.

Decked out in red, white and blue and armed with Union flags they formed 3 teams - the red team, the white team and the blue team. The day was well supported and match was played in good spirit although the weather did try to put a dampener on things. The day was very windy with a heavy down pour mid game caused umbrellas to blow away and a trolly ending in the ditch on the 13th. Ladies and fun however were the winners.

The White Team won the competition and Sharon Warrington won the Nearest the Pin Challenge.

Some of the ladies celibrating the day.