Apologies for the lack of a post last week to my regular followers but I had a few days off to visit my twin grandsons which was a very pleasant time.  For those who care or wonder this blog averages around fifty hits a day and gets up to three hundred on a Friday / Saturday when I normally post.  In the past week the audience has included USA, India, Canada, New Zealand, Indonesia, Poland, Brazil, Australia and an "unknown region"!!

Any way back to the courses and you know it's dry when you get excited by 5mm of rain which is all we got on Tuesday evening but it was worth its weight in gold.  It certainly helped perk the fairways up in particular though won't be enough to flush any of salt build up we would have in the greens which is there as a result of using the recycled water for irrigation.

A huge day for the staff on Tuesday as well with 120 tonne of sand being added to the River course bunkers and the greens on the River being de-thatched and sanded.  The sand contains some added humate and gypsum and the 5mm of rain on top of this was just what the superintendent ordered!

Next week will see two of the fairway bunkers on 4 and 10W backfaced and drainage upgraded.  We will be trialling a product that was developed in Sydney that means that you don't need to trench throughout the bunker to facilitate the drainage and it "should" be a fast and painless operation.  The West greens will also be de-thatched and sanded on Tuesday weather permitting.

It was good to see so many members attend the club information night last night and as always the Cool Tweed members passion for their club and golf courses was out on show.   For those who didn't attend there was a letter regarding the courses tabled and a response was asked for and it was agreed that it will be answered within this blog.  There were 18 items raised so it will take some time to answer them all so hopefully a rainy day next week will allow me some more time to thoroughly answer the queries.

Bunkers are always a hot topic at any golf club all over the world and we are certainly no different here.  The subject of the actual rakes that are in the bunkers was raised and I said I would put some alternative rakes out for members to try out.  I have five different rakes that will be placed in greenside bunkers on 18R for the next two weeks and then transferred to 18W for 2 weeks.  They are labelled A, B, C, D and E so if you have a standout favourite then let us know.  We might need to have some fluro tape on the handles though so as players can see them as the one below nearly caused the player to trip on it as they walked past it in the fairway bunker on 1R this morning!!!

Potential trip hazard?