And then it rained

180 mm of rain has fallen on the courses in the last 36 hours and that follows rain being recorded on 11 of the previous 13 days.  Suffice to say that we are wet!   The rain on Monday morning was mainly confined to the coast as the picture shows blue skies a tantalizing kilometre away.

As with all climatic events there is some good to come out of it with the West greens getting a break from play and therefore no new pitchmarks and they are looking great.  On the downside, disease pressure on all the greens is high with the moisture and humidity but at this stage they are disease free.  The River greens have weakened as a result of the poor light intensity of the past couple of weeks and certainly since Friday.  They will be fertilized this week to help them recover.



Blue skies only a kilometre away inland



A rain event such as this also brings bunkers to the fore and the re-constructed River bunkers come in to their own.  As can be seen from the selection of photos, all re-constructed greenside bunkers on the River course were bone dry and fully playable at 6 am on Monday morning.  This is in stark contrast to the West bunkers that will require at least 200+ man hours to get them back to a state where they will be able to be raked this week, with several probably needing to be taken out of play for the week.  The photo of the 18th River below demonstrates that even with such a high face there is no wash in this bunker compared with the 18th west in the background that has severe wash.  This is why proper construction is so important with bunkers and that in our environment, the drainage properties of the bunker sand is the most critical factor in selecting the sand.  Unfortunately this drainage characteristic does lead to a sand that does cause ball plugging.  Fortunately there was no extra works planned this week and all efforts for the week will be directed to restoring playing conditions.

10th River bunker dry and no wash


   




 

5th West greenside washout

  

18th River no wash