Some more ordinary weather early in the week with golf affected once again.  Monday in particular was a dirty day with squally showers and a strong southerly blowing all day.  There were no carts on either course and the comp on the River course only had forty odd players.  There was a schools challenge event on the West course with a range of abilities but one of the young guns shot 70 off the blue tees in the abysmal weather which is an extraordinary score.  The weather picked up for the end of the week and Anzac Day was a ripper and Friday not too bad.  Fortunately the 50mm of rain that Byron Bay received today stayed just out to sea as it moved north and all but missed us which was good given there were more than 500 players registered to play today!!

The irrigation installation continued with 4R fairway nearly completed.  It's a deceptively large fairway and the short week cost the contractors some time but all in all a good progressive week.  The past eight weeks have flown by (in someways) and you would hardly know anything had happened on 9W apart from the scars from the mainline installation down the LHS of the hole.  Recovery will obviously slow with the onset of the cooler weather but the cooler weather assists with the necessary shutdown of holes.  For example due to the old / new pipe routing neither 4 or 5R greens are ''live'' this weekend which isn't an issue with no heat stress present.

A great week on the courses and I have to say they are looking a treat as we head towards winter.  Two mornings this week under 20 degrees in the shed compound @ 5am with this morning down to 17 so the slide is on although the days are perfect at this time of year.

Mondays ''Masters shotgun'' gave us the opportunity to do a pretty much full prep for the comp with a 10am shotgun.  The whole course was blown, mown and raked and looked great for the start.  Nice to hear pro Jared say the course was ''superb'' which it was.  Another shotgun start today on the River course with limited play prior offered  the same opportunity and again the course looked great although given it was a brewery promotional day they may not remember.  Disappointing when you drive around the course just before hit off and see this on 16R after only about thirty players had gone through in the morning.

Don't know how you could leave that?

 

The irrigation system installation continues and 5W was completed this week so we now have five holes successfully completed.  Last weeks ''first run'' went off nearly perfectly.  I say nearly as I was sitting waiting to watch the first spray come on and somehow the time on my phone was a minute faster than the computer so the launch was a minute later than I was expecting.  One of the longest minutes as I pondered what I had done wrong!! 

I mentioned earlier that one of the features of the new system is the ability to water greens and green surrounds separately.  This is going to become a real water saver as the runtime for each spray on the greens will be less than half of what we used previously based on this weeks trials.  The completed holes 5 - 8W have some of the heaviest green surrounds that hold moisture for a long time so it was perfect timing for them to not be overwatered this week following last weeks deluges.

We move on to 4R next week which will be followed by 5R then back across to 4 and 10W.

And the end of an era with halfway West being removed.  Once the front awning was removed it really showed just how dilapidated it was.

Seen better days.

 

New concrete to be poured next Friday.

A very frustrating week for golfers and greenkeepers alike with some really annoying weather patterns happening recently.  Probably the worst one was when we got 30mm of rain in a dumping on Sunday night that virtually no one nearby received, particularly Kingscliff where a mere 3mm fell.  We are now just shy of a metre of rain YTD which is less than up on the Sunshine Coast but still frustrating.  It has really affected our programs across the board from spraying to mowing and raking.  The fertiliser we got out across the property the other week has certainly kicked in though we were too wet to mow most fairways and the growth has been prolific to say the least.  At least that's a good problem to have as we head towards winter.  1 and 9R fairways have stayed very wet and the recent high tides haven't helped that.

An all too familiar look on 1R fairway lately.  Only good for ducks.

The irrigation installation continues and despite some lost days due to the weather they are still proceeding well.  6W was completed yesterday and the mainline down the LHS of 5W was installed today.  6W is probably one of the boggiest holes we have so it was unfortunate that they were down there during such a wet spell.  They can't really pick and choose where they go as the work needs to be done in sequence to allow the pipe installation to be as uniform as possible.

It was all action @ 6W this week.

So four holes are now completed and tonight (well tomorrow morning) will see the new system being operated automatically for the first time.  And yes I will be coming in at 3am to watch!!

I sent the chart below around this morning and indeed it is a tale of woe.  For a Club that is so reliant on golf cart traffic that is a lot of cart restriction and less than usual player numbers which has a dramatic impact on income obviously.  We have had worse runs than March 16 - 30 in terms of consecutive days of rainfall but that's up there with the best of them.  We will probably nudge past a metre of rain YTD by Sunday night by the look of the forecast.  I have no doubt said it before but this is as wet as the courses can get.  It's not ideal when you are trying to get some growth happening going into winter as that much rain means lots of cloud cover and all the turf needs at the moment is bright sunny conditions.

 

A tale of woe!!

The rain isn't much good for the irrigation installation either with their machinery making lots of mess and having an impact on their ability to work.  We are now up to four lost days due to weather although they are still on track as far as the program is concerned.  There is still some work that they can do in the rain such as lifting low sprinklers and assembling fittings but that doesn't run to four days.  7W did get finished this week and we are off to 6W on Monday with hopefully some fine weather.

Not where the installation equipment should be on a Friday.

 

Installation of the new half way West starts next Monday and is due to run for two weeks.  The entire area will be fenced off and Members are asked not to enter the construction zone.  Two portable toilets will be available for players use.  There will also be some concrete path installation happening at 1W tee so buggy path diversions will be in place there as well.  As with the irrigation installation please follow the signage that will be in place and we apologise for the inconvenience but the finished product is what we are after. 

And spare a thought for Bonville GC as they host the Australian Womens Classic this week.  It has been held at Bonville on five occasions and I don't think they have ever had a dry one with this years event already shortened to a 36 hole event after play was abandoned this morning.

About the only thing all this rain is good for is to wash in the fertiliser that was put out this week.  A very healthy 6 tonne of fertiliser was applied to all tees and fairways on Tuesday and Wednesday this week and there is hardly a prill left in sight with the constant rain moving it into the soil profile.  As mentioned last week this application is about getting as much growth as possible as we move into the cooler months and from the look of the fairways at the moment we are well on track.  We do have a long cooler season with good growth not really starting until October so the more good days we get now the better so as to maintain the soil temperatures as high as possible.  It is generally the second half of April that sees the temperatures drop so hopefully we get to see some sun soon.

At least we haven't had the volume of rain that has poured down on the Sunshine Coast with most areas up there receiving more than 1400mm since January 1.  Last Wednesday there wasn't a single golf course open up there apparently.  We stand at 795mm YTD which is bad enough and we have recorded rain on twenty two days in March.

One thing the rain is definitely not good for is the irrigation project.  Another day lost to weather this week and work continued on 7W which is one of our wettest fairways which is certainly not ideal in these conditions.  7W should be finished on Wednesday and then we move to 6W.  At this stage it is proceeding well with no real major issues although there have been lots of small ones.  The pump shed build has been completed and now we wait on the pump set to be built which could be as long as three months.  Our current pumps are handling both the new and old systems and the new one won't really be required until we get to some of the larger diameter pipework closer to the pump shed.

Things were going swimmingly until Thursday arrived and then we were literally swimming, with 40mm of rain falling in even time which pretty much flooded the courses.  About the only thing that sort of rain is good for is to help compact the trenches on the new irrigation system, which it did.  Unfortunately it meant our first day of installation lost to rain.

The irrigation installation on 8W was completed this week and a start was made on 7W with part of the mainline being installed down the LHS of the fairway.  This is one of the classic fairways where no irrigation is really required down the shaded LHS during the cooler months but is required down the RHS.  The new dual row of individually controlled sprinklers will allow us to do this whereas previously one of our huge fairway sprinklers would water well into the rough on both sides of the fairway.  Precise application of the irrigation water is one of the prime goals of the new installation.

Another feature of the new system is the installation of a ''back to back'' system on the greens.  This means that there is a set of sprinklers that are solely placed to irrigate the greens and another set placed to irrigate the greens surrounds.  This is not only a major water conserver but also prevents the greens surrounds from getting too wet from overwatering.  On holes 5,6, 7 and 8W for example, we will hardly ever use the surround set of sprinklers due to the heavy / wet nature of the soil surrounding the greens.

Construction of the new pump shed adjacent to 17R tee started today and the new computer system for the irrigation control was also installed this week.  A crazy busy week, that's for sure.

 

New home screen.

9R green is progressing well and has now been mown down to 5mm.  Another sanding was applied today to help level out some of the wash caused by the heavy showers that have occurred since planting six weeks ago. We are on track to open at the eleven week mark from planting at this stage.

The constant showers have really affected our ability to get some of our necessary spraying done, particularly herbicides, so there are a few weedy areas about the place but most of the main play areas are still clean.  The weed seed that flooded into the bunkers during the 2022 floods continues to germinate with a proliferation of assorted weeds continuing to sprout even now.  The next couple of weeks will see us getting ready for the natural slowdown that occurs with the onset of the cooler months and that means a broad application of fertiliser to take advantage of the remaining warmth and a lift in mowing heights across most playing surfaces.  The goal is to have as much healthy grass as possible by the end of April.

An internal email was sent out from me yesterday and it was nice to get the following reply from Club Professional Jared - 

Hi All,

Played the West yesterday, 9^th hole looks to have recovered well! I just wanted to mention that the course condition was fantastic! The greens are the best I have seen them and the positive comments we are getting in the shop from members and visitors are at an all time high.

Thank you Peter and your team.

The installation of the irrigation system continues with 9W being completed on Thursday and open for play on Friday.  We are still waiting on the communication cable to be hooked up which is planned for next week and then we will officially be operating the old and the new system side by side.  9W has been operated manually and has worked a treat although until all the new mainlines are installed flow rates are down a little but not enough to affect performance.

As I mentioned previously there will be times where other holes are affected by the works necessitating other holes to be shortened as was the case Thursday and Friday when the new mainline had to be extended across to the next hole being 8W.  8W should be completed by Wednesday and then we move on to 7W.

While the holes are closed we will take the opportunity of no play to give the bunkers on each hole a heavy renovation including levelling the sand and adding sand where needed.  Speaking of the bunkers, all the West course greenside bunkers were ''back-faced"" this week which means the sand was dragged off the faces and exit points and levelled on the floor or playing area of the bunker.  And the River course bunkers had 30 tonne of sand added to the main play areas.

9W bunker renovated while out of play.

LHS 1R bunker topped up with sand.

The photo below shows just how much sand can be moved in a single bunker shot.  Multiply that by the number of players we have and the multiple attempts a lot of those players make to extricate themselves from the bunker and you can imagine just how much sand gets moved around in and out of the bunker.

Is that a shovel?

 

GX0108711

Week one of the irrigation project has now been completed and a highly successful week it was.  The first thing we had to do was isolate all existing irrigation on 9W fairway which was a task in itself as there were 4 x 100 mm pipes feeding the fairway.  We also had to ensure that we had water supply still available to the holes in the corner – 5,6,7 and 8W.  Once this was successfully completed the main line that will feed 9W fairway was trenched in down the left hand side and a 125 millimetre pipe was laid in this trench along with a new 50 millimetre potable water supply pipe and communication cable that will run to each sprinkler.  The potable line will supply all on course drinking fountains and toilet block.  From the mainline trench the lateral trenches that run out to the sprinklers in the middle of the fairway were ploughed in and then risers for the sprinklers were installed on the pipe.  At this stage the fairway sprinklers will be installed on Monday and the green will also be installed on Monday and Tuesday hopefully having us off the 9W fairway by Wednesday which will be two days ahead of schedule.

Unfortunately due to the number of open trenches and holes the hole will remain out of play over this weekend due to safety concerns.

I will upload a video to the Blog on Saturday morning with a bit more information from the first week.