Another glorious week albeit a little on the windy side which as I have mentioned before makes overnight irrigation very unreliable.  A very busy week as well with exposed tree roots being removed from fairways which is quite a laborious task which leaves quite a mess behind as I mentioned last week.  The video below shows one of the removals in progress.

A nice tangle of roots on 13W

Rakes are now being left out of bunkers as a trial and there has been paint applied where the rake should be placed after using it to help players.  

Bunkers have always been an emotional topic with virtually everyone having a different view.  The great Peter Thomson says that bunkers shouldn't be raked at all by groundstaff for play and that they should be as hard as possible to get out of.  I remember Seve Ballesteros at Royal Melbourne complaining that the bunkers were too easy to get out of such was the level of manicuring applied to them and that was back in the 1980's.  It is commonplace now to see 6 or 8 people in a bunker preparing it for tournament play, especially on the PGA Tour in the US.  Most Superintendents would tell you now that almost as many resources are put into bunker preparation and maintenance as greens.  They are a hazard aren't they??!!  

And the great Walter Travis who was one of the greatest amateurs to play the game agrees with Peter Thomson as per the article below and he wasn't too keen on short rough either!!.  Travis was an interesting character and was an accomplished player who was the first "American" to win the British amateur.  I have American in inverted commas there as he was actually born and raised in central Victoria in the town of Maldon before moving to the USA, marrying and becoming a US citizen!!  He was also quite a prodigious golf course architect during and after his playing career as well as an authority on turfgrasses.

Not too sure about the last sentence!!