The crazy week that is the Mick Fanning Charity golf day has come and (nearly) gone with most of the clean up completed.  The vast majority of the players are really good with the courses and considering what goes on out there there is really very little damage done.  Having been so soft for so long we have got some tyre tracking from the vehicles bumping in and out but that is unavoidable given the elaborate nature and weight of some of the activation's.

TaylorMade @ 17W.

Win a bike for a HIO @ 3R.

The Balter bar between the 18's.

Tee off here on the Adidas shoebox on 12R.

The YETI bar @ 9R.

 

So cold overnight the ice didn't melt @ 11W tee.

 

A cold but fine end to the week and at least the courses have dried out somewhat.  In general the turf is still very healthy across the courses as we head towards winter which is a very good thing.  Hopefully the rain is behind us and we can move forward and actually start using the new irrigation system!!

Players out on the River course would have seen and heard some activity in our dump area adjacent to 6R this week.  The area had literally become a swamp and access for tipping debris and then grinding it has been severely restricted.  A huge amount of material is transported there on an annual basis, even without a cyclone being thrown into the mix!!  The area has now been graded to allow for water run off and has some geo-textile material laid this week in readiness for 1000 cubic metres of recycled concrete to be installed next week to convert the dump area into a hardstand allowing for all weather access.

Prepped and ready for hardstand.

  

FREE MULCH.

 

We have dropped a couple of loads of high quality mulch in the buggy shed carpark for members to access for free.  Help yourself and please keep the area as neat and tidy as possible.

Free mulch.

 

Just shy of 100mm for this rain event with more to come in the forecast which so far has been extremely accurate.  It's incredibly wet out on the courses to say the least.  The seagulls roosting on 4W dam is never a good sign. 

Saturday morning on 4W dam!!

 

 

It's not looking good for the weekend's golf with today's forecast almost exact calling for  showers increasing late in the morning to rain in the afternoon.  At least we got 13 days without rain which last happened in December.  Today's rain will definitely get us to the somewhat unwanted figure of 100 inches since November 1.

The warmer weather earlier this week gave us what will be the last kick of growth you would think and we are quite well poised as we enter winter.  From where we were at the start of April turf wise it is a big relief to be honest.  As mentioned previously lots of rain means lots of cloud which means less growth potential.

The new pump station was commissioned over the past week and still has some tweaking to be done but we can already see much improved water distribution throughout the courses.  Although there is still some of the old pipe network in use the new pump station cycles about every one and a half hours.  Prior to the commencement of the irrigation install our old pumps cycled every 8 minutes due to the number of unseen / known leaks that we had out there.

The irrigation install has continued with 9R in progress.  They will be there much of next week and it is planned to move to the short range / practice greens area the week after the Fanning golf day.  This will mean the short range will be closed to practice and once we move to the practice greens the new " target green " as we call it, will become a practice putting green only. 

This rainfall is now getting completely ridiculous which is a line I am sure I have penned before.  The courses just can't dry out at present although we are lucky with a large percentage of courses closed at the moment due to the wet conditions.  Considering we are regarded as a "dry" course it must be bad elsewhere.  Even courses with wall to wall cart paths are closed.  The prediction for the next 24 hours isn't good but hopefully it's patchy and misses us for a change.  The call on carts will be made as usual before 5.30am tomorrow morning.

Despite the obvious wet conditions this was the first social group out this morning who decided to almost park on 10R green and then proceeded to drive over 11R tee.  Sometimes I wish I could just pull the key on people with such little respect.

No idea?

The irrigation install continued on 12R this week and once finished there we will do 1R green on the way past as we move on to 9R.  Before the irrigation install we took the opportunity to remove the front right bunker on 12R.  It has been earmarked for removal since the course improvement plan of 2014 but a 4 inch irrigation main ran right through the middle of it which would have impacted totally on the removal.  Now that the main is redundant we were able to do the work.  It will allow for much greater access to and from the green and help spread the wear in that area.  It will be turfed next week and will take a few weeks to settle given the cooler climate at the moment.

No longer there.

 

The pump shed has finally been primed and is ready for commissioning and being bought online which will happen on Tuesday next week.  To start with we will be utilising the existing power supply until the new cables are laid and there is a total of 3 kilometres to be laid so that will be a process in itself.

I am off for a weeks R & R so no Blog post next week.

 

"Here comes the rain again" is the title of a song that pretty much sums up the past 6 months at Coolie Tweed and today was no exception.  20mm overnight and then a further 6mm in the scuds that keep coming our way during the day, which doesn't sound much, but in our current situation it certainly is.  Our rainfall total since November 1 is 2,404mm which converts to just over 96 inches.  The courses are just saturated.

We were able to get some fertiliser out on greens on both courses earlier this week and got some advantage out of the last warm days we will probably get as we head into winter.  Mowing heights on the River greens have already been lifted and this is to help the plant survive the low light conditions of winter and also for the shaded greens to try and keep as much leaf as possible on them.  The tees will get fertilised (weather permitting) on Monday and the mowing height will be lifted for the winter which is routine practice for this time of year, again in an attempt to hold some cover.

The irrigation install was interrupted by the public holiday on Monday then the rain so after a really good Tuesday / Wednesday they hit a wall and so are still on 13R and will finish that early next week before moving to 12R.   The vast majority of the PE pipe joins are welded and that can't be done in the rain which with our past months doesn't help.  Hopefully one day we will get to use the system!!??

Autumn / winter is Poa annua germination time so we have started trialing some products for control.  It has been so wet that some of the Poa plants from last year have survived and are still evident at the moment so they were the areas treated this week.