Not quite so cold in the mornings this week but a cool southerly most of the week kept our jackets on.  The greens have really tightened up with the colder weather which is quite natural and greens on both courses are putting nicely.  The fairways have a good cover of grass which as I often say is critical going into winter.

Some new bunker rakes have been installed on both courses for a trial and first reactions have been positive.  It is a very different rakehead and is designed to be pulled rather than pushed  with one disadvantage being that you can't really smooth out the face of the bunker by pushing sand if you need to.  One of the problems with most bunker rakes is that when they are pulled they drag the sand to the exit point but this one doesn't allow that to happen.  So far with the bunker sand being very dry they are working a treat (by those that use them!!) but the test will come when the sand is wet so we will wait and see on that front.

The new rakehead.

 

We hosted the Australian senior matchplay this week and they were given a very well prepared golf course and I would have thought we would have got some respect shown to our courses in return.  The photo below shows the shared buggy on 1W very nearly on the green.  The Australian senior OOM is used to qualify for this tournament so its not like they are novices with no knowledge of golf etiquette.

Really??

 

The irrigation install continued this week with the short range and practice greens being installed.  Thanks to the members for working around the contractors as they went about their business in such a busy area.  We are really on the home straight now with just 1R, 10R, 11R and 1W to be done.  We move to 1R next week.

I am off to the Australian Sportsturf Conference next week so there will be no Blog post for the week. 

The crazy week that is the Mick Fanning Charity golf day has come and (nearly) gone with most of the clean up completed.  The vast majority of the players are really good with the courses and considering what goes on out there there is really very little damage done.  Having been so soft for so long we have got some tyre tracking from the vehicles bumping in and out but that is unavoidable given the elaborate nature and weight of some of the activation's.

TaylorMade @ 17W.

Win a bike for a HIO @ 3R.

The Balter bar between the 18's.

Tee off here on the Adidas shoebox on 12R.

The YETI bar @ 9R.

 

So cold overnight the ice didn't melt @ 11W tee.

 

A cold but fine end to the week and at least the courses have dried out somewhat.  In general the turf is still very healthy across the courses as we head towards winter which is a very good thing.  Hopefully the rain is behind us and we can move forward and actually start using the new irrigation system!!

Players out on the River course would have seen and heard some activity in our dump area adjacent to 6R this week.  The area had literally become a swamp and access for tipping debris and then grinding it has been severely restricted.  A huge amount of material is transported there on an annual basis, even without a cyclone being thrown into the mix!!  The area has now been graded to allow for water run off and has some geo-textile material laid this week in readiness for 1000 cubic metres of recycled concrete to be installed next week to convert the dump area into a hardstand allowing for all weather access.

Prepped and ready for hardstand.

  

FREE MULCH.

 

We have dropped a couple of loads of high quality mulch in the buggy shed carpark for members to access for free.  Help yourself and please keep the area as neat and tidy as possible.

Free mulch.

 

Just shy of 100mm for this rain event with more to come in the forecast which so far has been extremely accurate.  It's incredibly wet out on the courses to say the least.  The seagulls roosting on 4W dam is never a good sign. 

Saturday morning on 4W dam!!

 

 

It's not looking good for the weekend's golf with today's forecast almost exact calling for  showers increasing late in the morning to rain in the afternoon.  At least we got 13 days without rain which last happened in December.  Today's rain will definitely get us to the somewhat unwanted figure of 100 inches since November 1.

The warmer weather earlier this week gave us what will be the last kick of growth you would think and we are quite well poised as we enter winter.  From where we were at the start of April turf wise it is a big relief to be honest.  As mentioned previously lots of rain means lots of cloud which means less growth potential.

The new pump station was commissioned over the past week and still has some tweaking to be done but we can already see much improved water distribution throughout the courses.  Although there is still some of the old pipe network in use the new pump station cycles about every one and a half hours.  Prior to the commencement of the irrigation install our old pumps cycled every 8 minutes due to the number of unseen / known leaks that we had out there.

The irrigation install has continued with 9R in progress.  They will be there much of next week and it is planned to move to the short range / practice greens area the week after the Fanning golf day.  This will mean the short range will be closed to practice and once we move to the practice greens the new " target green " as we call it, will become a practice putting green only. 

This rainfall is now getting completely ridiculous which is a line I am sure I have penned before.  The courses just can't dry out at present although we are lucky with a large percentage of courses closed at the moment due to the wet conditions.  Considering we are regarded as a "dry" course it must be bad elsewhere.  Even courses with wall to wall cart paths are closed.  The prediction for the next 24 hours isn't good but hopefully it's patchy and misses us for a change.  The call on carts will be made as usual before 5.30am tomorrow morning.

Despite the obvious wet conditions this was the first social group out this morning who decided to almost park on 10R green and then proceeded to drive over 11R tee.  Sometimes I wish I could just pull the key on people with such little respect.

No idea?

The irrigation install continued on 12R this week and once finished there we will do 1R green on the way past as we move on to 9R.  Before the irrigation install we took the opportunity to remove the front right bunker on 12R.  It has been earmarked for removal since the course improvement plan of 2014 but a 4 inch irrigation main ran right through the middle of it which would have impacted totally on the removal.  Now that the main is redundant we were able to do the work.  It will allow for much greater access to and from the green and help spread the wear in that area.  It will be turfed next week and will take a few weeks to settle given the cooler climate at the moment.

No longer there.

 

The pump shed has finally been primed and is ready for commissioning and being bought online which will happen on Tuesday next week.  To start with we will be utilising the existing power supply until the new cables are laid and there is a total of 3 kilometres to be laid so that will be a process in itself.

I am off for a weeks R & R so no Blog post next week.

 

"Here comes the rain again" is the title of a song that pretty much sums up the past 6 months at Coolie Tweed and today was no exception.  20mm overnight and then a further 6mm in the scuds that keep coming our way during the day, which doesn't sound much, but in our current situation it certainly is.  Our rainfall total since November 1 is 2,404mm which converts to just over 96 inches.  The courses are just saturated.

We were able to get some fertiliser out on greens on both courses earlier this week and got some advantage out of the last warm days we will probably get as we head into winter.  Mowing heights on the River greens have already been lifted and this is to help the plant survive the low light conditions of winter and also for the shaded greens to try and keep as much leaf as possible on them.  The tees will get fertilised (weather permitting) on Monday and the mowing height will be lifted for the winter which is routine practice for this time of year, again in an attempt to hold some cover.

The irrigation install was interrupted by the public holiday on Monday then the rain so after a really good Tuesday / Wednesday they hit a wall and so are still on 13R and will finish that early next week before moving to 12R.   The vast majority of the PE pipe joins are welded and that can't be done in the rain which with our past months doesn't help.  Hopefully one day we will get to use the system!!??

Autumn / winter is Poa annua germination time so we have started trialing some products for control.  It has been so wet that some of the Poa plants from last year have survived and are still evident at the moment so they were the areas treated this week. 

A fairly reasonable week weather wise after a very wet weekend and then in came the rain again on Friday.  It doesn't take much to wet us up with the water table sitting so high.

On the irrigation front, 14R is nearly finished after a washout on Friday.  There will be no work on the Queensland Public Holiday on Monday and they will finish 14R off on Tuesday before moving to 13R. 

We were able to get some sand on 12W fairway turf on Thursday so the rain was quite welcome for that and also for some fertiliser that got put out on selected tees to try and juice them up for winter.  The cold temperatures today (it was under 20 degrees in the compound this morning for the first time this year) will really start to slow the turf right down so every little bit of growth helps.

A couple of "innovations" of sorts, one of which I certainly don't want to become common here and the other needs never to appear in Australia.

Not sure who decided putting a nail through a plastic tee to extend its life was a good idea but the mower certainly didn't appreciate it.  The size of some "soft" spikes and tees in general are bad enough but this was something else!!

Even has a spiral effect to help get it in the ground I guess!!

 

The nail won!!  A big chunk out of the middle of the bedknife.

The second innovation is the latest "golf car" to hit courses in the USA.  Apparently they are very common, particularly down in Florida.  Please not here!!

I guess it is air conditioned!!

 

I know I have talked about this before but one of the things a golfer can do on the course is to rake a bunker properly out of respect of your fellow players and also the staff who prep them for play, which with the amount of rain and washouts we have been getting has been an arduous task to say the least.  Two great examples below following the Members comp this past Wednesday.  They don't even require a caption with the top one on 10R greenside and the bottom one 13W greenside.  Almost all the damage on 10 was the work of one person.

 

Certainly not the forecast we were looking for for the upcoming long weekend especially after it was updated at 11.30 this morning with a 95% chance of more than 100mm.  Let's hope they got that completely wrong!! 

We were finally able to get some sand slits into 12W fairway which I have been trying to get done since TCAlfred.  The trenches we dug for the slits were only 300mm deep but had groundwater in the bottom of them such is the level of the water table at the moment.

The River greens have responded  well to the fertiliser application they received and certainly enjoyed the bright warm sunny conditions over the Easter weekend.  They now have an acceptable cover of grass going into winter which is a relief after the way they looked 2 weeks ago.  The West greens are also looking good moving into winter although I would have liked to get a sanding on them today but the forecast took that away.

The irrigation install is moving along and 14R should get finished next week and we then move on to 13R.  Two small parts are delaying the pump shed commissioning which should now happen in May.  We will be using the existing power supply from the old shed in the short term until a new switchboard can be installed.

TCAlfred recovery continues with stump and hanger removal ongoing.  The contractors will be off site next week and back the following and I expect all recovery works to be completed by Friday May 23.  The stump removal has been very impressive and within a few months you will barely be able to tell there was ever a tree there which given the size of the stumps is very impressive.

Probably the biggest stump @ RHS 2W tee.

 

Gawn!!

   

Finally a relatively dry week although the forecast doesn't look good.  At least there has been some sun and the River greens have responded well following a solid tine aeration and sanding earlier in the week.  All bunkers on both courses are finally in play now, awaiting the coming rain!!

On the TCAlfred clean up, the last load of mulch left the property this afternoon which is the end of that monumental task.  I will get a tonnage figure of what was taken away at some stage but it's huge to say the least.  We are still finding some trees that have ''popped'' such as the one pictured below which was one of three on 5W.  We are also finding a few more dead trees as we go and are removing them when possible.  The stump removal started this week and possibly moved a little faster than expected and the hanger removal is also in progress.  The leftover chips and logs from the stump grinding will be left stacked until there is enough for us to economically collect them.

Another root popped out.

 

We are also stockpiling some green waste down near Halfway West and there will be some more added early next week with the the woodchipper coming on site next Thursday to clean it up.  We are using that area as it has excellent access for the truck and chipper.

The last truck being loaded down next to 6R.

The tower reaching up for the hangers.

That's him just in case you can't see him.

A bit of an update on where we are at with what's been happening on the courses over the past month which has probably been the most hectic of my career.  All of the tree pile at 6R has now been mulched and will be trucked out next week.  Was there a mulch pile in the car park?  You wouldn't know now!!

Stump and hanger removal will start on Monday.  It has been estimated that the stump removal will take up to a month but as not many contractors have ever done this number of stumps in size and quantity, it's hard to know.  Holes will need to be closed or shortened while the contractors work to ensure their safety for the duration.  It has been estimated that some of the larger ones will take 3 - 4 hours to remove so it will be a slow process.  Once the contractors get up into the trees to remove the hangers they will also be able to identify potential risk trees going forward. 

In addition to the 96 trees that were totally uprooted in TCAlfred, there were many others severely damaged by falling trees near them or others just damaged structurally like the one that was split down the middle on 16R.

From a distance.

Close up.

 

The courses are incredibly wet and apart from Monday this week it has not been very good drying weather recently.  Another 10mm overnight into Friday just topped us up again.  We received 807mm of rain in March.  That's just over 32 inches.  It takes our total since November 1 to 2196mm or just shy of 88 inches.

12W fairway works area took the rain fairly well.  The area will need a couple of sand trenches put in to help move the water down the profile.  The bunker drainage needed a further upgrade this week after it was contaminated by some clay in the deluge.  The area was turfed on Monday March 3 in the middle of heavy rain and we were literally grading in front of the turf layers so some of the levels are now out a bit.  Given the rain we got later that week in TCAlfred I was amazed the turf didn't float away.  Since the area was turfed we have had 33 inches of rain in 32 days, so it’s had a fair workout!!

Irrigation install slowed again this week.  17R green and fairway are complete and some big pipe is going across 17R and rear 16R green to hook up to two mainlines there.  There is still some drainage repair required at the front of 18R tee but the high tides and water table has made it difficult this past week.  The pump station commissioning is imminent which is rather exciting as that will be when we get some really good flow rates happening.  Not that irrigation has been at the forefront of our thoughts this summer.

The West greens got a solid tine aeration yesterday to get some oxygen down to the roots and the River greens will be done during next Tuesdays closure. The River greens will also receive a sanding and granular fertiliser to try and promote some growth  Mowing heights on the River greens will then be lifted to try and get some cover going into winter as they are desperately thin given the lack of sunlight this summer due to the constant rain.

A big week of mulching down at 6R which will continue into next week and we got the main carpark back to being a carpark again and you wouldn't know what had happened there over the past three weeks.  6R is still being processed and will be moved off site next week and hopefully by then we will nearly be back to normal again.  Of course there is the small issue of the stumps and we are hoping that their removal will start in about two weeks time.  We will also be using contractors to move through the courses removing ''hangers'' that are broken branches still caught up in the trees.  The stumps will be very time consuming and depending on the hole they are working on we may need to close the hole to ensure everyone's safety.  We are hoping to get two contractors and as you could imagine any treelopper / contractor are a little busy at present.

6R mulchpile.

We have now had 780mm of rain in March alone which takes us to a total of 2,116mm since November 1.  Think about that for a minute, as that converts to just shy of 85 inches.  This was a report on ABC news this week and probably isn't the sort of press we are looking for -

The Tweed Shire Council was one of the worst-hit LGAs in the state, according to Superintendent Tanner.

About 640 millimetres of rain fell at the Tweed Heads Golf Club in the five days up to Monday, March 10, BOM senior climatologist Hugh McDowall said.

He said it was one of the exceptional totals, with the north coast recording an average of 200-400mm.

Having that much rain obviously means we are wet but also means a lot of cloud and dull light conditions, which isn't good for 328 Couchgrass which we have on the River greens.  There are a number of descriptions used within the trade for what happens to 328 under these conditions and they include ''leggy'', ''puffy'' and ''laid flat'' which is probably a good word for the River greens at the moment.  They are really open and thin which is not the way you want to enter winter so we are looking for an immediate improvement in the weather over the next month.

Well after a monumental two weeks we made it and I can't believe what has been achieved in that time.  Players tomorrow will find the courses in pristine condition, with all but a few pockets of rough not mown.  The only downside is the 200+ stumps that are out there!!  There's still grinding of the green waste that was stockpiled over near 6R to go and that will continue for a few days then it's the stump removal to come.

It couldn't have been achieved without the efforts of CTHGC grounds crew and the awesome contractors who all pulled together and worked in sync as a great team.  To Graham Dewitt and his awesome team from GDE Tree Services, Chicka and Trevor King and Pete McConnell, a heartfelt thanks from me for coming to our aid when you could well have gone anywhere else following TCAlfred.  Thanks also to the great group of volunteers early this week and to the members for putting up with just 9 holes while we went about the works.  Also thanks to the Club Board and Management for their support.

And while it doesn't quite match the lyrics of Jackson Browne's ''The load out"" song, it seemed an appropriate thought as Graham's crew packed their gear up to head on home to Brisbane and beyond after spending two weeks of their lives at Coolie Tweed.

The load out - packed up and heading home.  Thanks again!!

 

Another half a dozen trees have ''popped'' meaning their root ball has been exposed which quite possibly happened in yesterdays gusty southerly change.  To be honest I thought some more trees would have come down in that wind but there were no more on the ground this morning.  I did an audit of stumps today with our main tree contractor and there were 192 so we will top 200 comfortably.  

We are progressing very well and thanks to the member volunteers the West course will tidy up very quickly.  We just have to pick up the literally 100's of piles they left for us which is a huge bonus so thanks again.

Just one of the piles from the vollies!!

The carpark is certainly getting full and we started transporting the mulch off property today and did a little grinding of the massive amount of green waste and logs that have come off the courses.  It's been a great team effort between our staff and the contractors and there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. 

First load of mulch being loaded.

 

If you had told me last Saturday that there would be 9 holes open for play tomorrow I would have laughed out loud.  

The effort by the crew and contractors this week has been nothing short of extraordinary.

I just hope players appreciate that when they play this weekend.

 

Let's not forget that this is where we were 4 days ago with over 100 huge trees on the ground.

Just 4 days ago.

 

Another good day and the goal of opening the front nine River on Saturday will be achieved.  1 and 9R are still very wet but you wouldn't know anything else happened on the rest of the holes.  We have no irrigation water which I am hoping will be resolved tomorrow.  If we don't resolve the issue and have no water over the weekend, then we will not be mowing greens to save that stress on the plant.  But at least you will be playing some golf.

We built a temporary road across the start of 16W fairway so the heavy machinery can access the course.  Depending on what it looks like after we have finished, we may even leave it there as this is a much used access point to the courses.

Not quite the M1 but it will work.

Another issue that has happened with the trees is that some of them have ''popped'' meaning they have started to fall and their roots have come out of the ground.  This means they are unsafe and need removal.  That means a further 25 trees thus far, so at this stage we are approaching 150 trees down.  And none of them are small.  The top photo shows the root of this one exposed and also the slant of the tree and the bottom photo shows a close up of the tear in the root  

The slant of the tree and raised root are evident.

The arrowed area above.