It's certainly nice to get back to the courses and the sensational weather that is more spring like than winter.  For the sake of the turf, particularly on the greens I hope the sun continues to shine.  The River greens are having a very tough time of it with the huge amount of play almost literally wearing them out.  The shaded and heavy walk off traffic areas are feeling it the most.  It is easy to see just how much shade and wear affects the greens when you compare shaded greens like 4, 5 and 12 with full sun greens like 16 and 18 on the River course.  The West greens are not as badly shaded but 3 and 5 are having a tough time of it which is to be expected given that they are still only 9 months old.  The photo below is of 12R green at 1pm last Tuesday and shows the extent of the shade on the green that makes growing quality turf virtually impossible.

12R green at 1 pm.

All in all though the courses are in great shape and a credit to my Assistant Simon and the rest of the crew with the work they have put in over the incredibly busy golfing month just gone.  The comments from players in the Senior Amateur that was held this week were very positive which helps make all the hard work worthwhile.

I mentioned about the resistant Poa annua before I left and unfortunately there is no real breakthrough available for Poa control post emergence but there were a couple of pre emergent options that we may try.  It is hardly surprising as controlling Poa seems to be a bit like curing the common cold which for the first time in my travels I didn't get a cold whilst away.  Given we spent a week in Iceland in their "summer" where the temperature never got above 10 degrees celsius it was a bit of a surprise!!  There was an unexpected large number of golf courses in Iceland that are predominantly Poa annua so they don't need to control it that's for sure.  As an aside I think I saw at least 12 golf courses but not one person playing given the weather, despite nearly 24 hours daylight being available!!  So the upshot at Cool Tweed is that we will be trialing a couple of different options for Poa control this coming season.

And if you lost a Callaway ball on the right side of 8R recently it's caught in a tree as shown below!!

RHS 8R

That's a Callaway up there!!