I mentioned last week that we are mostly about preparing the turf for winter at the moment and a superb week of weather has certainly helped move that along.  The tees and fairways have an excellent cover of grass and have had a surge of growth this week which is exactly what we want.  We actually probably had too much grass on the tees when we arrived on Tuesday after five days of no mowing due to Easter and some wet humid conditions.  We have also had a surge of late season crowsfoot germination that I don't really want to treat at the moment for fear of setting the turf back when we have it in such good condition.  The crowsfoot will "melt" out as we get cooler.

The way the weather has been this past month we haven't had to think about irrigation so it was quite nice today to have to remember how to run the system.  Our pipework is always pressurised  and ready to go but when the weather has been as bad as it has, we certainly haven't needed the new system.  While we aren't using any water the small jockey pump that keeps the system at pressure starts twice a day at the most.  The old system had so many leaks in it that the old jockey pump would start several times an hour so there is a significant saving there on power, not to mention wear and tear on pipework.

Weather permitting next week we will be adding some sand to some of the heaviest used bunkers and if the weather continues we may try and sneak some sand on to the River greens as a final leveller moving in to winter.  As mentioned above the grass is having one last surge so we have lots of mowing to catch up on especially after the recent short weeks.  

And I can't let The US Masters pass without some comment.  Superintendents the world over call golfers responses to the Masters as "Augusta Syndrome" when players ask "why can't our course be that good"?  It's fairly well documented that the maintenance budget at Augusta is almost infinite and they have a huge crew numbering 60 that is supplemented by an army of more than 100 volunteers for the tournament.  Indeed, most of the volunteers are not a "Dad's Army" but Course Supers from some of the worlds best Clubs.  I think I counted 560 names on our timesheet today which is probably a years worth of play for Augusta!!   A few bits of trivia about Masters week is that it is the first PGA Tour event played on Bentgrass greens this year and there are only 44 bunkers on the course.  The greens average just on 600 square metres which is about the size of 12W at Cool Tweed even though they look much bigger.  For a Course Super there's probably not a more high pressure job and this is Augusta's main mans 2nd Masters after his predecessor did 27.  Having said that the incumbent has been at Augusta for 16 years.  Well I'm off to watch some R1 highlights.......

Fairway mowing Augusta style.