An early post this week as I am off for a weeks R & R and some golf watching at Royal Pines thrown in so no post next week.

It seems an eternity ago that we started the River greens renovation but alas it was only last Sunday.  It still amazes me how much work gets done in the 2 days we have the greens to ourselves and is a credit to the crew.  The light showers we got on Sunday evening and again on Monday morning were quite an annoyance as although there it barely wet the ground it was enough to start the sand to start sticking which means the job takes a lot longer.  The photo shows the first pass of the scarifiers on 3R green.  Depending on the green this was done anywhere between 6 and 9 times per green up and back on the same line.  The greens then had a de-thatcher run over them which is a similar machine but with closer spacings of the blades resulting in a finer cut / slice.  The greens were then mown and cored with the cores rubbed back in to the surface and then the "chaff" blown off.  Another mow and some fertiliser then a sanding with another top up sanding put out this morning.

The reno begins...

As mentioned last week some of the foreign couchgrass in the River greens had been sprayed out and this week we took on the tedious task of plugging those areas out.  Nearly 200 x 9 inch square plugs were done and look to have come up very well.  The idea is that as the greens recover from the renovation the patches will blend in to the surface. 

Oh and if you watch some of the World Cup this week at Metropolitan GC and wonder how they get their bunker edges the way they do......look below for the staff member cutting them with a knife!!  Any runners are generally trimmed with scissors!!

Attention to detail gone wild!!