It was good to get away for a break but the weather in WA was appalling with rain every day and a couple of single digit temperature days.  At least it improved a little here but still nowhere near November temperatures yet.

Those low temperatures still have the River greens recovering very slowly from their renovation.  I have spoken to several clubs around SE Queensland and they are all in the same boat after such a tough time with the weather since the floods and near record playing numbers causing plenty of wear and therefore stress on the plant.  We were able to get another sanding out on Tuesday and are planning to repeat the dose again next Tuesday which will help level the surface up while the mowing height is coming back down.  

The West greens renovation is scheduled for next Monday week and like the River greens it will be a much lighter than normal reno.  TifEagle doesn't really like heavy thatch removal so in their current state of health once again we will concentrate on aeration via core removal.  The soil tests for the West greens are much better than the River but there will still be some amendments added and they will be incorporated in the sand that is applied as a top dressing. 

Finally got to clean most of the courses up today with a break in the wind that has been relentless with leaf debris strewn across the courses making mowing and raking difficult.  And we had probably the most difficult irrigation repair we have encountered this week with a pipe splitting in two places at the same time.  What made it so bad was that it was almost wrapped around the Norfolk Pine at the back of 13R green.  Hand digging was not an option although the irrigation team tried for a while.  Fortunately our backhoe operator Pete McConnell came to the rescue and helped us out.  Then the fun came with the first section of pipe being what is known as ''rural poly'' and the next section a low density type of poly pipe that we have never encountered before and that fittings were not available.  A bit of ''engineering'' to make up some fittings and hopefully we have got it right.  The pipe doesn't appear on any of the rather scratchy plans we have and would probably date from more than fifty years ago.

The ''trench'' at 13R green!!  And digging it below!!