And just like that January has been and gone!!  A very productive week on course albeit a short week with Australia Day on Monday.  The first Tuesday course closure of 2026 gave us the opportunity to get the West greens de-thatched which is the method we use to not only remove thatch but it is our preferred method of evening up the surface.  Because of the tight canopy of turf that TifEagle produces it is difficult to get any sand onto the surface as there is literally nowhere for it to go so the sand stays close to the surface which then destroys the mower blades on subsequent mowings. The River 328 greens on the other hand are a much more open canopy and the sand can mingle through the surface allowing the mowers to pass over the sand.

We are certainly in a bit of a dry spell (for us anyway!!) with a number of old drain and trench lines starting to show and the water table has probably dropped 200mm this week alone.  The new irrigation system is performing very well demonstrating the uniformity that we are getting across the irrigated areas of the courses.  Unfortunately we are having issues with our supply of water from the treatment plant which is at about half our expected flow rates.  Even with the less water available the system is certainly doing the job.

Pipeline evident across 3W fairway.

  

I know I go on about pitchmarks a lot but the photo below shows 8 totally untouched then mown over and scalped pitchmarks within a one metre square area on 16W.  Once a pitchmark is scalped by a mower it takes weeks for it to recover and with the volume of play we are getting there's lots of scalped pitchmarks out there.  We bought  a tool that does a reasonable job of repairing pitchmarks and tried to get the mower operator to scour the green prior to mowing but they weren't able to do both jobs and stay in front of the ridiculously fast first groups out and we don't have enough crew to allocate a person to do it.  So please repair your pitchmarks!!

Each black spot is an old pitchmark.