937mm of rain since Boxing Day and still it rains with the 60mm that fell on Wednesday afternoon most unwelcome especially given that it came down in about 45 minutes!  Unfortunately it caused quite a bit of wash at the front of 17W green and fortunately didn't wash too much of the grass away but will make grooming the surface that little more difficult.  The cover will come off and Monday and the mowers will be on soon after.  TifEagle is a very different grass to the River course 328 and has vastly different maintenance requirements which will be quite manageable as we can prepare the rest of the course then get to 17 before the players.

The West greens continue to improve which is a great relief because it didn't look good there for a while and it has been the most stressful time of my greenkeeping career which now (somewhat unfortunately) spans 4 decades this year.  I have never seen greens turf lose the root system the way they did and I am amazed the way they have recovered to be honest.  The photo below shows dramatic root growth over the past week. One thing that has worked in their favour has been the rain and the effect of lower player numbers which considerably reduces the stress they are under.  But I wish the people playing would make some attempt at repairing their pitch marks.

New roots 100mm deep from 2W green

I trialed a potential new tees mower this week and was very impressed.  We currently mow tees with a couple of older greensmowers and it generally takes 2 men 3 hours for each course.  We were able to mow both courses in 3 hours with just the one machine which is a great time saver and the resultant finished surface was just as good.  There are a few scalp marks on some tees, especially the smaller ones but the turf generally adjusts to this after a period of time.  Another 3 hours of rough cutting time would be very handy at this time of year methinks!!