Nearly 50mm of most welcome rainfall over the past two days and it was probably more than that as it was sideways most of the time with the strong gusty winds literally blowing it over the top of the rain gauge.  To have gone from being so wet to so dry in such a short time is pretty amazing and the ground just lapped up the rainfall.  The best part was that we got nearly 100% infiltration of the rain as there is hardly a puddle to be seen.

One of the issues that we had develop with the sudden drying out was the creation of some "dry patch" areas on greens on both courses.  Dry patch is a bit different to drought stress causing a green to dry out in general as it is more localised and caused by some of the sand in the soil profile becoming water repellent.   A couple of the greens on the River course dried out due to sprinkler failure but on the West greens it was more to do with the sand in the greens.  The series of photos below show an area of dry patch on 15W green and the associated soil moisture readings from the area.

The photos show the dry patch area at the top of the photo (slightly dis-coloured) and the arrow is pointing at the dry patch area and you can see two small holes where the moisture probe took a reading of 8.0 %  Less than 12 inches below you can see another two small holes where the moisture probe took a reading of 28.1%.

Dry patch at the top and the probe holes visible.

 

Bottom reading.

Top reading in the dry area.

 

The West greens have recovered extremely well and the rainfall has made them surge forward with some of the most growth I have seen from them.  Unfortunately that soft lush growth is just what the ducks want and they are having a field day on them at the moment and leaving their droppings behind which isn't ideal for putting.

And this is why I hate ducks!!

 

The Aus Open is on in Melbourne and given the winter and spring that they have experienced down there the condition of the courses is an absolute credit to the Supers and their crews.  The wettest October on record for both and although they are called "sand belt" even 25mm of rain can wreak havoc and from what I have seen the bunkers at both courses have been restored several times after washing away in the rain over the past two months.  How they grow the quality of couch fairways that they produce down there astounds me even though I spent fifteen years at Victoria and oversaw the conversion from cool season Poa fairways to warm season Couch.  The 1981 Open was played on Poa fairways and if the tournament was held a week later the fairways would have been dead as the Poa had melted out with a couple of high temperature days.  In those days virtually no one played at Victoria over summer as the fairways were virtually devoid of grass until the couchgrass started to cover over in very late summer.  There was no such thing as fairway irrigation and indeed for the first five years I was there only the greens were watered which was commonplace for most of the sandbelt clubs back in the day.  Oh and for the 1981 Open we had a crew of just nine compared to nudging fifty for this year!!