Weather Monitoring at St Annes Old Links Golf Club

St Annes Old Links Golf Club has been established since 1901 on land which since 1886 had been home to the Lytham & St. Anne’s Golf Club. The club is located in the North West of England about a mile from the Royal Lytham Open 2012 venue.

Stuart Hogg is the Course Manager at St Annes Old Links and has been at the club for over 8 years. Stuart controls the budgets and purchasing of equipment, and has the responsibility of maintaining the greens, fairways and even the car park! The course has 7 full time staff and 4 part time staff depending on the time of year. Stuart started a career in greenkeeping as his “ideal job would be one which he could still play football on a Saturday afternoon!”. He started a Youth Training Scheme job at a championship course local to home and has been developing his knowledge, understanding and skills ever since.

Stuart had used a Davis Vantage Pro weather station at his previous club in Scotland. When looking for a weather station for St Annes Old Links he knew he wanted to use the same system. He found Weather Front Ltd who were very helpful during his purchase and were available to give advice and answer any questions. The Davis Vantage Pro 2 station was very easy to set-up and use.

“New staff members always take an interest in the weather station and the readings it provides” comments Stuart, however it is he who uses it to constantly monitor conditions at the club.

Instead of using guesswork Stuart is able to monitor closely the wind speed and direction readings during spraying of the course and rainfall readings when he feels specific areas of the course are likely to flood. “It’s on all the time and monitored when we are spraying or when I know the greens/course may start to flood in areas” advises Stuart. The station is “very useful for use in spraying records and risk assessments for wind speeds”, as well as collecting general weather data for the St Annes Old Links.

Stuart finds best thing about having the weather station is “having the data to hand and not guessing” at the conditions when making decisions.