Having to schedule some irrigation this week was something different with a dry week from Tuesday.  Driving out on the course on Wednesday morning and seeing a sky full of stars was very pleasant and hasn't happened often lately.  I checked the rainfall stats for last year and 2021 came in as the tenth wettest since records started in 1886.

Another big week of work on the courses and a couple of low wind days gave us a good chance to clean the courses up for a good mow and rake.  But it all seems to no avail as todays wind has the next lot of leaves on the ground. We need to keep trying to keep the surfaces clean to allow the mowing, raking and spraying to do as good a job as possible.   We also got some weeds sprayed in the greens surrounds on both courses and some fairways on the River course.  A leaf tip burn is the result but it will grow out in no time.  The burn also helps reduce the mowing requirement which is a nice little bonus.

Seemingly neverending - but necessary.

 

Over the next few months as time permits we will be backfacing some of the bunkers that have got a build up of algae on them following the constant wet of the past three months.  It is time consuming work requiring the algae to be removed by hand in most cases and fresh sand added to the bunkers.  We use a sand that is sourced from Caboolture and it is what they refer to as an 80/20 mix.  That is, it is comprised of 80% bunker sand and 20% brickies loam which helps give the sand some ''body'' to help prevent balls plugging.  It is one of the most commonly used sand mix for bunkers in SE Queensland.  The brickies loam component also explains the orange colour of the sand that does bleach out in a few weeks.

16W greenside

14W greenside

Speaking of wind and last Saturdays final round of the club champs must go down as one of the toughest days for golf you could have.  I said last week that Cool Tweed players are good wind players but Saturday was ridiculous and then was coupled with sideways rain to top it off.  Congratulations to all the winners.  I doubt Jordan Spieth would have played his shot from the cliff face at 8 at Pebble Beach in that sort of wind.  But that shot has been hit many times before including this one below by Marion Hollins in 1929 albeit a bit further back from the edge.  It's amazing that in such a litigious society that the cliff face has just a couple of small warning signs.