A nice 6mm of rain on Thursday night was just what the courses needed but there is a bit more predicted overnight and early tomorrow morning which is not what we want.  I also didn't want the Cockies to start tearing in to 5W green as they did late today.  Time for the decoy Eagle to come out once again which I hope will work.

90 tonne of sand was added to selected River course bunkers this week as advised on the Blog last week.  Most of the bunkers selected nearly had the drainage gravel layer showing which means they were 300mm deeper than originally constructed so not only are they now a little shallower but also more playable.

We did some root pruning along side some fairways last week with a machine that has been used here before to give the grass some chance to take up the nutrients and water rather than the trees.  Time will tell on its success.

All the irrigation components for the West greens have now arrived and it can finally be said that "next month" the project starts.  As part of the construction all existing irrigation will be removed and replaced by new equipment.  Some of the sprinklers in the greens date back to the 70's and are well past their use by date.  I have a consulting agronomist advising on the sand and the various amendments that are being included in the top growing soil profile and we went down to get some samples from the sand stockpiles that have been reserved for us to ensure they are suitable.  Once the existing greens are excavated out a sand that conforms with the USGA specification will be added with the top 100mm of USGA sand amended with various fertilisers.

Amended sand stockpile with foot prints where we took samples.

Main sand stockpile