Well the grass is growing as hard as I have seen it for a few years and couple the growth with a short working week and it was a great effort the crew to just about get everything mown by weeks end.  The last two years have been very dry and the two before that was the greens construction phase and I don't recall seeing this strength of grass growth over those years.

One of the unseen aspects of what we do to prepare the courses is what takes place in the machinery shed.  We have a full time mechanic who services and repairs our machinery fleet and he is sometimes assisted by other staff.  This was the case this week with the bedknives (bottom blades) on one of the fairway mowers needing to be replaced.  When we do this we also take the opportunity to grind the reels while the units are off.  Three of our staff have been trained in the use of the large grinder that we use for the purpose and two of them work on the mowers five units for a total of twenty hours.  The units weigh about 70kg each and are quite cumbersome to move around the shed and remove and fit back on the machine.  We got the machine back out on the course on Friday and the resultant surface was first class and another mower is scheduled to be done next week.  We often try to program this work for a rainy day but they have been few and far between over recent history although next week looks likely?

New bedknife fitted.