1. cnswplayers@groups.io

Re: Lawn mowing

Roger Evans
 

Hi Tim, Alex and all,

Thanks for you comments and I also received an of interesting 'phone call on the subject.   It certainly appears that our lawns are being cut 2 or 3 mm too long and so we will further investigate the possibility of purchasing our own mower.
I spoke to John Deeves in your old club, Tim, and he said that when he was responsible for the lawns he set the mower height at the width of 2 x 50 cent pieces plus one 10 cent making the length 6mm.  Mosman tell me that they cut their lawns to 6mm normally but reduce it to 5 mm for competitions.

Although we have a number of octogenarians in our club none of them seem to have any trouble hitting the ball between hoops 1 & 2 or from corner 4 to hoop 1 - perhaps it is good exercise!  Also I am sure that we couldn't justify daily mowing as at RSGC but it looks like we should do better than at present.

I appreciate your input.

Regards
Roger

On 2/03/2016 9:36 PM, Alix Verge alixverge@... [cnswplayers] wrote:
 

Hi Roger,

 

At my club (RSGC) most players come to croquet because they have become too old or infirm to play the other sports on offer and there has been a history of older players sitting on the sidelines enjoying/appreciating the lush green grass of the lawns and so refusing to allow them to be cut shorter. The lawns were cut at grass tennis court length – 6 or 7mm -  and generally played at 7 seconds. I damaged my wrists trying to do rolls and no players developed touch play skills. I had no idea there was a reason other than octogenarian (and nonagenarian) delight at grassy swards.

 

It took me 7 years to get the groundsmen to cut the lawns lower. It was the same reason – the blades needed to be set lower and the unions prohibited the groundsmen doing this so a mechanic had to be called from the golf course workshop for each change (croq and tennis lawns are mowed every day). We got a new course superintendant who arranged a new mower immediately, lawns now 10-11 seconds, ancient players at the club now developing skilled play.

 

All players (and we have some very old/infirm) can now get to hoop 2 from 1, or from corner 4 to hoop 1. I am able to do the AC 2-3 split from south of hoop 1. Now that the lawns are shorter and faster we suddenly have a Div 2 pennants team instead of all GC players languishing in the Div 3 squad.

 

Short grass leads to more skill, more fun, fewer injuries. I vote for a new mower.

 

Alix

 

From: cnswplayers@... [mailto:cnswplayers@...]
Sent: Wednesday, 2 March 2016 9:05 PM
To: cnswplayers@...
Subject: [cnswplayers] Lawn mowing

 

 

Hi Everyone,

Currently we pay to have our (Jamberoo CC) croquet lawns mown by the
adjacent golf club greenkeepers who have set their mower ( a Toro
Greensmaster Triflex mower) for an 8 mm cut. At least one other club in
our area cut their lawns down to 5 mm which means that their lawns are
somewhat faster than ours.
The Oxford croquet web site indicates that a croquet lawn should be cut
to 3/16 inch (just under 5 mm) but they use Fescue rather than Couch
grass and so I would be interested to know what cutting height other
Australian clubs are using for their lawns.
The golf club sets their mowing height for their greens and wont change
it for our lawns and so we are considering the possibility of buying our
own mower so we can set the cut height to suit ourselves, but we need to
know whether it would be worth changing.

Any comments?

Thanks
Roger Evans
Jamberoo CC
Join cnswplayers@groups.io to automatically receive all group messages.