Coolangatta Tweed GC Course Maintenance

Friday, October 28, 2016

Another very productive week on the West greens TifEagle conversion with 14 being finished off on Monday and planted on Thursday and then 15 to the stage of being ready for planting next Tuesday. So half the greens are planted and we now move to 10 on Monday morning. I have been looking forward to this one following descriptions by staff of car parts appearing in the walls of the bunkers so heavens knows what's under the green. It has always been the most difficult to maintain which is fairly obvious from the amount of foreign couchgrass that had invaded over the years.

Speaking of what's in the greens there are two piles of material adjacent to 15W tee that come from 14 and 15 and they are poles apart in their texture and specification which perhaps answers the question of just why the maintenance of the greens was so difficult given the varying soil profiles. The material from 14 will be usable as top dressing material on fairways whilst the pile from 15 will be used to top dress the CIP bunker areas from last year.

The cover was removed from 13 on Tuesday after 13 days and the growth of the surrounds is astounding as shown in the photo below and the establishment on the green is pretty impressive too with an excellent even coverage. Fertiliser application commenced immediately in the effort to get a full grass cover ASAP to get the green back in to play. 16 is establishing very well but a constant malfunctioning sprinkler (which has been changed over twice) has caused some wash. Excellent root growth is evident on 16 after just 7 days as shown below.

15 was interesting in what we found underneath with some more very poorly placed amendment that was right up in the root zone. We also found several old "small" golf balls in it and discovered that the green drains to the RHS dam not the left!! While we were at 15 drainage in all 3 bunkers was upgraded.