The pump station is still causing some grief after further pipework problems were discovered last week while undertaking some repairs with another section of pipe needing to be fabricated to replace a faulty fitting.  As all pump stations are different there are generally few spares available as the pump set is individually assembled to suit the layout of the shed area.  So for the past two weeks we have had no capacity to pump water on to the courses.  Fortunately it is winter, although with the recent spell of mid 20 degree days you wouldn't know it.  So we are irrigating greens and some tees by hand with a water cart which is a slow but obviously necessary process.  Apologies to the players booked to play today but the overnight and early morning rain was definitely music to my ears.  The forecast looks promising as well but not so much for golf.

The rain forecast on Thursday afternoon.

Our current irrigation system!!

I have written before about some Poa annua (wintergrass) that has become resistant to the normal herbicides that we use to control it both pre and post seeding in several areas of the courses.  Poa is a great survivor and indeed is the primary turf type for many greens around the world including Pebble Beach and Oakmont in the USA.  But for many courses it is considered a weed and a lot of effort is put in to controlling it, particularly in greens.  For a warm season turf course such as ours it is better to control it as it dies out very quickly once it warms up due to its shallow root depth.  The resistant varieties started appearing on 5 and 6R and have now found there way to the Tifeagle practice green and 10R green.  Most of the products that are available to control Poa work quite slowly with some taking up to four weeks and can have the ability to damage the other turfgrass so a cautious approach is required in using alternative products.  It is not a local problem for us with resistance being experienced in Sydney and Melbourne in particular.

Resistant Poa annua in the PPG surround.

An interesting study out of the USA recently regarding foot traffic on golf greens.  It showed that the average foursome of golfers will leave each green with an average of 500 footsteps in the process of walking on to the green, putting out and then walking off the green.  So with the 100 foursomes booked on the courses tomorrow there will be 50,000 steps taken on the greens!