Another huge week of play although Tuesday's rain put a bit of a dampener on things for the day but it was just what the courses wanted with a good soaking rain that delivered 12mm which was just perfect.  The West course tees and fairways had all been fertilised so it was an added bonus for them.

We were able to get the West course closed for three hours after the Vets on Thursday which gave us the opportunity to give the West greens a dry de-thatch, mow and edge and they came up looking quite brilliant.  The lack of wind and play allowed us to give the fairways a good blow off and then the 7.30 shotgun corporate day on the River course on Friday morning gave us the chance to do a full prep for the Friday comp, which doesnt happen that often with all main surfaces blown, mown.and raked.

The partial course closures are a great advantage for us to get a huge amount of work done with no play so it's a very productive time and also gives us the chance to do some of the intrusive work like sanding or tining greens without interfering with play.  At this stage the partial closures will hopefully become a regular occurrence.

A couple of weeks back I put a photo up of some dew removal on 18R green to demonstrate just how small the area is that's left for hole placement.  This week it is 2R greens turn.  If you recall last year we had to do a mini renovation on 2R in spring as the green was virtually worn out following a relentless winters play and the green is once again heading the same way.  Some tree thinning at the back of the green last year has helped but the green is still very much considered a shaded green which makes it difficult to grow turf at the required mowing height. The lack of hole placement locations doesn't help either with the volume of play that we are receiving causing significant wear on an already stressed turf surface. With three metres of dew removed from the green in the photo we are left with about 80 square metres of possible hole locations.  The second photo is the hole location on 2R that day to show just how much wear and tear the hole location is subjected to.  We have lifted the mowing height on the green and started walk mowing it which takes a huge amount of stress off the green that is caused by the ride on mowers.

Once again not much area for hole locations with the undulations in the green.

   

One days wear and tear on 2R.