Weekly roundup

The new Intermediate Mower has arrived and has been put to work with impressive initial results.  The photo below shows it in action mowing around the 1st West tee and it has handled any mounds we have thrown at it with ease.  There will be a period of settling in for some areas as the mower previously used on these areas was a "reel" type mower and the new one is a "rotary" type which will result in some minor scalping in a few areas.  Also notice in the photo the tee board at the 1st tee with the days sponsors displayed for all to see.  Just some more value for our valued sponsors.



New Toro 4700 in action

The new sand has been added to selected bunkers and we have had some positive feedback from a few players this week.  The real test for the sand will be when it installed on the face of the bunkers and its ability to withstand ball impact.  We used a backhoe to spread and compact the sand and also wheel rolled it with the bunker rake machines.  The recent heavy rain will also help firm the sand up.   It is interesting to see the amount of the sand that is splashed up on to the face of the bunkers with every shot played which is quite easy due to the different color. 

Backhoe in RHS 9 West

Whilst on the rain we finished up with 140mm in 24 hours from lunchtime Wednesday, much of which was good soaking rain which is just what we needed rather than the 25mm that fell in 20 minutes the previous Thursday and rendered the course temporarily unplayable as the photo of 10 west green shows.  The only worrying trend over the past 4 to 6 weeks is that the weather bureau has been spot on with their predictions!  They forecast that heavy rain last week almost to the minute and were the same with the timing of this weeks.  Unfortunately they are predicting rainfall for the next 3 days with a 95% chance on Saturday for up to 10mm then a 100% chance for Sunday with up to 25mm and a 95% chance for Monday with up to 25mm.  Let's hope they have gotten it wrong.

10 West flooded

The West greens are showing good recovery and with some plugging out this week should be back to a full cover shortly.  I mentioned a couple of posts back that a combination of events had caused significant stress and some turf loss.  As things have settled it is apparent that the greens with the variety of Bentgrass "1019 / 1020" (greens 2,5,6,7,8,9,10,18 and the practice) were worst affected  which has everyone scratching their heads as to why.  The one positive is that we have certainly killed the Poa (wintergrass) which is good as due to its shallow root system it is very quick to die out under summer heat stress.