Nearly 50mm of rain over the past week which was most welcome however the soil temperatures are still down so the grass is still not moving just yet.

Last Tuesday morning was dark, gloomy and showery so much so that very few ladies ventured out.  The club have engaged Airswing Media to do some filming of the course and Tuesday morning was the first days filming which didn't look very promising as the cloud stayed around.  But the weather cleared and Nick from Airswing was able to get some great photos and videos of the courses that will be used to promote the club.  He is coming back to get some more shots and the couple of samples sent through already are most impressive.  He uses a drone to do the work and it is a far cry from the old days of literally hanging out of a helicopter to get the shots. The video below shows Nick and the drone on 12R.

The tree clearing at the rear of 15R green last year has certainly paid dividends with the green surviving winter in the best condition I have seen it.  The other bonus was the condition of 4R tee which, even though the tree removal was carried out on the southern side, has also survived winter in "best ever" condition.  The tee has been re-turfed every year since I have been here but not this year!!

4R mens tee fully grassed

A busy time coming up on the courses in the next 6 weeks weather permitting.  Our first project is to extend the irrigation system out to provide coverage to the areas turfed earlier this year in the Course Improvement Plan (CIP).  Some preparation works will be conducted next week with the installation starting on Monday November 9.  Obviously there will be trenching involved but it will only be to the actual sprinkler location with a new Australian "radio wave technology" being used to remove the need to trench to the controllers as well.  Previously we would have needed to trench back to the controllers which is  a task in itself as the controllers have a lot of underground services nearby which always makes a trencher operator nervous!!

The week following is the River greens renovation and we are hoping for a great run with the weather as we had last year when the greens were heavily de-thatched, cored and lightly sanded and were then able to be mown three days later.

We will the take a breath for a week before completing Stage one of the CIP which involves removing the rear bunker at 7R and reducing the size of the front two bunkers and re-draining them.  The front two bunkers will have the "ProLiner" bunker liner material placed which prevents the bunkers from washing out in heavy rain and also stops contamination from soil and stone underneath.  We will need to play a temporary green for the week as it is impossible to conduct the works with play.  As we will only be closing for 5 days the temporary green may not be of the greatest quality but it will be the same for everyone.