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!!)