We dodged the rain until just on 2.30pm today after watching Byron Bay receive 50mm during the day.  12mm fell on our courses which was quite heavy at times but once again has many fairway areas very wet.  The strong winds have made the courses quite messy with a lot of tree debris around but the wind had helped dry the courses until this afternoon.

At least the storm wasn't as bad as the one that hit the AT&T tournament on the US PGA Tour last week that saw the course closed to spectators on the Saturday.  80 mph winds hit the course and uprooted as many as 40 trees including a 75 foot tree that crashed onto the 14th fairway.  Tiger Woods' group played in front of a gallery of 3 for much of the day!!

One of the trees down at Congressional.


Back to the Tweed and we were finally able to get some normal works carried out this week on dry ground which was nice including getting the West greens sanded in preparation for Round 3 of the Club Champs next week.  The sanding helps true the surface up and rather unfortunately in our case also fills in the poorly or unrepaired pitch marks.  The cry of "sand sand and more sand laddie" was the favourite line of Old Tom Morris the original greenkeeper at The Old Course.  I would love to get more sand on the greens but the disruption to our large player numbers precludes this.  It has been an interesting time over the past few months trying to keep up with all the tasks I would like to do with the constant rainfall. 

Scheduling works on a busy golf course such as ours is not an easy task with member competitions on every day coupled with early tee off times.  Unfortunately we do have to work in and amongst the players on a regular basis to get the work done.  It is interesting when the Club Championships are coming up and players obviously expect a ramp up in course preparations for the event which we certainly do.  We then come to the important first day tomorrow and find ourselves with a 2 tee 6.30 am start on both courses with first light at 6.20am.  Suffice to say we do as much as possible in front of the play.

Speaking of Scottish golf courses and the long serving Course Manager at Carnoustie GC has recently retired and the Club honored him by renaming the 11th hole on the Championship Course "John Philp" in his honour which is a great tribute.  And just out of interest you don't often see Carnoustie under water but the photo below shows what can happen after a 40mm downpour!!

Carnoustie under water

And our rainfall figures for the first 6 months of 2012 totalled 1825mm which compares to our annual average of around 1700mm....so yes it's been wet!!

Good luck to all the layers in the Championships, I trust you enjoy the courses especially the champion who left these two divots in the middle of the back tee on 15 River today.  I'd suggest that if you are taking divots like that on the tee of a 400 metre hole that a phone call to our teaching Pro Ross Moodie might be in order.

15 River tee today