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.