A very quiet week on the courses from our work output point of view with full comps and double shotgun starts for the Vets week of golf kind of making it hard to be overly productive.  Five staff were on leave of some sort or at trade school for the week which is ideal timing given the volume of play.  The weather probably didn't behave itself as it usually does for the week but I trust the players enjoyed themselves.

On the irrigation front the actual install of sprinklers was completed last week and this week saw some of the rectifications take place.  These should be completed by the end of next week and then the pump station needs some finishing touches, including the new power supply being bought on line.  For us it will be a process of working through lifting low sprinklers and topping up trenchlines over the coming months.  The contractors will be off site after next week ending what seems to have been a marathon 18 month install which was severely hampered by the rain.  A very big thank you to all members and players for putting up with the disruption during the install.  I can assure you that when we dry out - and we will - it will be worth it. 

I doubt that the photo below is real but it gave me a laugh that a golf club in Sweden installed a trackman on one of their tees for a members competition after seeing a similar thing on the coverage of a pro tournament.  And this was the result!!

Totally relatable!!

 

I was going to try and not mention the weather after a fairly uneventful week but the forecast doesn't look good for the weekend, and it depends on who you listen to as to the expected ferocity.  It certainly sounds like we are going to get some serious wind as well as some rain.  I think the movement of the system is a little unpredictable at this stage so it's a wait and see.  

One thing we won't be using this weekend is the new irrigation system!!  The installation of 1W green and the nursery green area occurred this week so now all sprinklers are in the ground and it's time for a clean up and some rectifications and final adjustments to happen.  We will also be doing some work later in the month on repairing some of the damaged areas like at rear 4W green, RHS 16W green and front of 14W green as well as the soil stockpile areas.  There will also be a lot of repair work carried out when it's a bit warmer and the turf can establish a lot faster than at this time of year.  That will involve a lot of the buggy path entries and exits.  As part of the installation a specific sprinkler has been located to cover these areas in the hope of improving them  However given the massive amount of cart traffic we get I don't hold out much hope of holding a turf cover.   

The Vets week of golf is upon us again next week so here's hoping that the run with perfect weather they have had over the many years will continue.  Fingers crossed on that one that's for sure!! 

Pretty much sounding like a broken record here complaining about the rain but it's almost monotonous on top of being frustrating for golfers and greenkeeper's alike.  A further 65mm this week which in the scheme of things isn't that much but after 2,745mm since November 1, 2024 it's enough to soak us once again.  The lack of sunlight is really affecting the turf on the greens now, particularly the 328 greens on the River course which have thinned considerably this past week.  So much so that we solid tine aerated and dry fertilised 2 and 12R greens this morning in front of the comp and would have liked to do more but the first group in the comp rocked around in 2.5 hours!!  The soil temperatures aren't quite where they need to be to fully activate the fertiliser but any response will do at the moment.

Thursday nights 25mm came from this colorful radar!!

The irrigation contractors had a major breakdown on Wednesday that cost them several hours and they weren't able to complete 1W this week so it will be Tuesday next week for that to finish.  We then need to install the nursery greens adjacent to 17R but shouldn't need to close a hole to do that.  After that is some housekeeping and rectification works for probably another 3 weeks but again no hole closures should be needed.

On Monday and Tuesday this week we hosted a group known as "next gen amateur tour" which as the name suggests is for up and coming players under 25yo I believe.  We were pretty wet and soft after the weekend's rain but gave them as good a course as possible given a 7am Monday shotgun.  Once they started playing I noticed virtually none of them were carrying a sand bucket.  I contacted the Pro Shop and asked if they could be reminded given the damage we were receiving.  To their credit one of the organisers actually came out to 14W and filled a few divots with sand because not one divot taken that morning had been touched.  They had around 70 players and before the first round had gone through I got the collection of photos below. It looked like every player had taken a divot.

Incredible?

They played 54 holes and even though they carried a bucket for the last 36, they certainly hardly used them.  They requested to play 1W as a par 3 to allow the full 54 holes to be played.  So we set up a 150m par 3 from left of the fairway.  The photo below is the result of the "tee" with just ONE divot out of potentially 200 having any sand placed in it.

Just one of potentially 200 divots sanded.

So if that's how the "next generation" of golfers are going to treat a course that they are guests at, I don't know if I am ready for them!! (Feeling old and cranky!!)

You certainly couldn't argue with the forecast for today as it was just about spot on with 15mm of rain coming down in the thunderstorm just after 6am this morning.  It did wipe most of the comp morning players out but the intrepid players form Coolangatta Surf Club still came out on the West, except for one group who somehow found themselves at 2R instead!!

Not really a lot to report on the courses but the turf certainly enjoyed the almost warm sunny conditions earlier in the week.  I just updated our bi-monthly plan and there's a lot of golf coming up so the warmer and brighter the better for the turf.  We will also have a smallish crew in the next few weeks with some annual leave and trade school commitments taking some staff away which is an ideal time of year for it to happen.  As we dried out this week there was a lot of dust generated on our access tracks due to us using a recycled concrete roadbase material after the cyclone which is about 1/10^th  the cost of regular roadbase.  We will be trialling a dust suppression compound next time we dry out to that extent.

I will have a first next week with some blind golfers playing on the course.  I know the process but have never seen it in action so looking forward to it.  Hope they don't complain about course conditions too much!!

The irrigation install is on the last hole and we got the chance to run a couple of large cycles this week and as mentioned previously the pressure and distribution of the water is certainly first class.  There is still some work to be done that is classified as rectifications and also the removal of the old satellites and some valve boxes in the coming weeks.

One of the questions often put to Superintendents is "sunrise or sunset?"  After this beautiful sunrise across 13R green and the Tweed River this week I know where my answer lies.

 

 

An interesting but at least warm way to start Saturday morning after someone lit fire to our green waste pile @ 6R.  You just never know what you're going to get each morning!!

 

Nearly ten days without rain is a very nice break and the courses are showing it as they finally dry out.  Light winds and fine sunny days make for excellent golfing conditions and there has certainly been lots of players taking advantage.

Earlier this week saw nearly the last of the tree works associated with the cyclone.  While removing some hangers one of the tree loppers found some substantial structural damage in two large Eucalypt's between the two 18's and there was another dead tree in the area that was also removed.  Two of the trees have been left as "habitat trees" as they are full of hollows which will give some excellent nesting spots for the variety of birds on the courses.  There are already some Cockatoo's that have moved in as seen in the photos below.

   

The two trees between the 18's.

 

First residents??  Location circled below.

 

That's where the cockatoo is located!!

The greens on both courses are holding up very well for this time of year.  One of the issues that we can experience in winter is disease but thus far our preventative applications have kept them clean, which given the amount of leaf wetness that there has been is a great win.  The Poa annua (Wintergrass) population is also down on the past two years in the greens which is also a good thing.

The irrigation system install continues and as mentioned last week there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel with 11R in progress and only 1W remaining.  It was certainly a fairly big week for us as the power to our old irrigation system was dis-connected along with the old pump station meaning we are now only using the new system.  Probably not that exciting for golfers but I can tell you it is for us.  We ran a couple of large irrigation programs this week and the water pressure supplied from the new pump station was extra impressive to say the least.  The new pump station only has slightly more capacity than our old one  but the bigger new pipe size allows for greater water flow and resultant pressure.    

It seems the rain just won't leave us alone with another 80+mm fall earlier in the week.  It was enough to virtually close the courses on Monday and Tuesday so we took the opportunity to give greens on both courses an aeration with some 6mm diameter solid tines.  With no play we also took the opportunity of leveling some areas around the new sprinklers on the greens.  I feel for the people down on the central coast who got smashed with the weather event but was relieved that we dodged that bullet for a change.

I have been following a long range forecaster for a while now and he has been quite accurate.  He is based on the Sunshine Coast and was spot on with the Hunter floods earlier in the year and with this weeks storm.  His next prediction is for a "weather event" on August 20 so will be watching that closely.  His prediction for 2026 is a bit alarming though as he is calling for widespread floods and that the recent floods have been "puddles" in comparison to what's coming.  Watch this space......

The Conference I attended in Sydney was a great success and once again autonomous machinery was very much at the forefront at the trade show.  A fully autonomous electric fairway mower certainly took my eye and it has been successfully used on golf courses in Europe for some time now.  The initial cost is substantial at nearly twice a traditional mower but the payback is potentially there.  Apparently a course in NZ has one on order so it will be an interesting watch. Nearly 1500 people visited the trade show over 2 days and it was a full house at nearly every educational session.

The irrigation installation hit a hurdle this week with a significant amount of rock encountered on both 1 and 10R.  The rock obviously cant be left in the trenches so it had to be trucked away and replacement material bought in.  It has delayed us somewhat but the light is at the end of the tunnel with just over two holes remaining.  There is still a lot of rectification works on trenches and low sprinklers to be done but at least the major works should be finished by the end of this month.

Some of the rock encountered.

More of the same.

 

Some more tree work next week between the two 18's with a couple of large badly damaged gums to come down as well as  a couple of dead trees.  Both 18's will play short on Monday and Tuesday to allow the works to be done and 10R closed for irrigation installation.

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.