What a difference a week makes with a totally different week of weather with some sun finally showing up.  We even had the need for some light irrigation on the greens which was the furthest thing from my mind this time last week.  There are still some wet patches out there and with a few more sunny breezy days hopefully we will really get to dry out.

We started sanding some of the irrigation mainline trenches this week and a couple of methods were trialed.  We will observe the results before doing more areas and it will be a better result when the grass can grow through the sand a lot faster with higher temperatures.  We also prepped a couple of areas for re-turfing next week and these are some of the areas that were badly damaged through the irrigation install and cyclone recovery.  This will be ongoing throughout the coming season with our goal being to have no "scars" from the irrigation install visible by the time we get to winter next year. 

We will also be re-turfing some of the buggy path entries and exits and will be trialing some materials to help with the massive amount of wear that these areas get.  Again it will be later in the year to take advantage of good growth conditions but I don't hold out much hope of maintaining a grass cover given the cart traffic that these areas receive.  As part of the irrigation design / install a sprinkler has been located adjacent to these areas to help the turf survive. 

The protective fence at the rear of 11R tee that blew down in the cyclone will be replaced starting Monday next week.  We will probably need to play 1R short while the works are undertaken to protect the contractors. 

With the Ryder Cup just a month away at Bethpage Black near New York City the photo below shows some of the infrastructure build underway for the event.  And it includes one of my favorite signs in golf - "The Black course is an extremely difficult course which we recommend only for highly skilled golfers".    

I played it nearly 25 years ago and can vouch for the signs accuracy!

There is a 24yo Australian greenkeeper from Royal Melbourne GC on the crew there this year and he posted the following-

Hello all, my name is Hugh Ryan, I am an Australian greenkeeper currently interning at Bethpage Black for the 2025 season where we are hosting the 2025 Ryder Cup from 23-28 September. Over the next few weeks I will share some insight into the day-to-day preparation for what is set to be the biggest golf event in the world this year.

Bethpage State Park is impressive to say the least. It is home to five public golf courses (Black, Yellow, Green, Blue and Red) which span across 1500 acres (approx. 607ha), all starting and finishing from the one clubhouse. About 250,000 rounds of golf are played here every year, with about 30,000 taking place on the Black Course which is renowned as being one of the toughest tests in golf worldwide.

With the tournament a month away, the last day of public golf on Bethpage Black was 17 August which means the course maintenance team now has a solid window to get the course in as best condition as possible for tournament week. Immediately after closure, all divots on the ryegrass/Poa annua fairways were filled with sand and ryegrass seed, followed by aeration on some weak areas in the rough along with seed applications. We also began plugging pitch marks on the Poa annua/bentgrass greens to remove any imperfections. We have also sodded some small high traffic areas in the roughs which are a ryegrass/Kentucky bluegrass/Poa mix.

 
The weather is now slowly turning away from peak summer with overnight temperatures in the low 60s Fahrenheit (15-18 degrees C) along with a few nice slow rainfalls. It has strongly assisted turf recovery given the playing surfaces are all cool-season which thrive in slightly cooler conditions.

Construction for corporate and general admission seating is rapidly expanding with new structures popping up daily. The 18th hole will be a major attraction for spectators, with the 5000-seat grandstand wrapping around the green and 1st tee set to provide an extraordinary atmosphere. I look forward to sharing more information about the course and tournament across the coming weeks." – Hugh Ryan. 

WOW, this rain is now getting ridiculous.  I seem to have penned that several times over the last couple of years but seriously enough is enough.  Yesterday had three of the most severe downfalls I have witnessed here and we finished with 132mm in the 24 hours to 9am Friday (that 132 actually fell between 9am and 7pm Thursday) after 24mm the previous 24 hours.  Fortunately there wasn't as much rain upstream in the Tweed River so a massive amount of water has been able to exit the property overnight into Friday and during the day today.

Thursday saw the first squall hit at around 10am and that dumped 14mm in even time.  Then another 60mm in the 12.30pm dump followed by another 60mm in the late afternoon event.

The photo below is the 10am dump and its effect on 10W green with the water sheeting off the green as it is supposed to and that was just the 14mm.  Hate to think what it looked like later in the day.  The 10am radar is below with the little squally system that dropped the 14mm right on top of us.

Water draining off 10W green.

  

Right on top of us.

I am always on the lookout for signs of approaching bad weather and the seagulls seem to be a pretty reliable source of information as they were all over 4 / 9W dam early yesterday.

They are pretty reliable?

 

I mentioned a little while back about a long range forecaster from the Sunshine Coast.  He predicted a "rainfall event" for August 21 about two months ago.  The scary one is that he has predicted "wettest period that could cause great flash floods is 27th August to 1st September".  It will be very interesting if that rings true as at this stage there is no one predicting any rainfall of any significance next week.  You have to subscribe to receive more detailed location based forecasts and if next week comes off I may well be subscribing.  The forecast area he covers seems to cover the east coast from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast.  Let's hope he's wrong??

We finally had some luck with the weather this week as we worked toward today's Pro am.  There were enough showers and rain to keep the courses soft but some of the heavy storms thankfully eluded us for a change. The crew did a great job preparing the West course, particularly the bunkers.  The West course bunkers aren't good in the wet and were out of play all week as we dealt with the rain.  But come Friday they were in great shape and were a credit to the bunker crew this week.  The course was closed on Thursday afternoon for Pro am preps and the photo shows a greenside bunker on 1W late Thursday.  Some players just have no appreciation of what it takes to get a course up.

Went looking for a left hander with big feet but lucky for them I couldn't find them.

 

The battle with some herbicide resistant Poa annua (winter grass) has continued this year although populations aren't as large as the past two years, particularly in the greens even though the constantly wet conditions are perfect for Poa to thrive.  We have trialed a different product on the greens with no success again.  Some of our fairway trials have been successful but the product used can't be used on greens.  Hopefully we get some normal hot and dry weather in spring to help our efforts.

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.