Some glorious late autumn weather this past week but winter certainly arrived on Thursday June 1 with a biting cold breeze.  It still got to 20 degrees so compared to the southern States we can't complain.

The dews early in the week were very heavy and with no wind around stayed on the ground all day.  The amount of water in the dew is almost enough to irrigate the turf. 

1W fairway still dewy @ 4.30pm!

 

Preparation of the front nine West course temporary greens started this week with the first lower mowing and scarifying.  A couple more mowings and a core and they will be ready for planting in early July.  

And so it begins.....

 

The new TifEagle greens are very well poised to enter their first winter season.  All hybrid Couchgrasses that are used for putting greens are susceptible to disease during the winter but with a good preventative application and some judicious fertiliser application the greens are ready for it.  This can be evidenced by the strong root growth at the moment which sees the roots out the bottom of the hole changer which means there is 8 - 10 inches of roots on them which is exceptional.

Roots on 18W green!!

The courses have been subject to a huge amount of play recently particularly with the beautiful weather and the turf in good health leading in to winter, but it still doesn't mean that course care by players can be forgotten.  I think I might start a campaign as mentioned the other week of "leave the course as you would like to find it"!!  Here are a couple of bad examples from this past week;

 

Pitch marks 3W green

Divots in mid 3W tee