Both courses have again been very wet over the past week with the West course still struggling to dry out.  I have heard some comments around "it's never been this wet before" and I would have to agree with that as far as ground conditions are concerned, however the YTD rainfall paints a different picture.  Generally when we get rain, we get heavy downpours that allow the water to runoff the surface similar to last weeks photo of 6R green last Friday morning.  The rain we have been getting on the other hand has just been constant light showers blowing in from the ocean with lots of moisture and very little drying potential.  I checked rainfall figures since 2020 and they are in the table below and tell an interesting tale, particularly comparing between 2024 and 2026 up to YTD July 20.  Although both years had a similar number of rain days there was 150mm more in 2024 and actually more "no carts" days compared to 2026.  

 

So despite being the wettest ground conditions I have seen here, actual rainfall totals are down.  We are certainly not alone with most clubs having cart restrictions and several not even allowing pull buggies and/or asking players walking to only do so on the paths.  Many have also been completely closed as well.  A few that have full course cart paths say that if you haven't got GPS carts that don't allow a cart to leave the path, players will still drive to wherever their ball is anyway.

One of the issues that we face at Cool Tweed when making a call on cart restrictions is 1 and 9R fairways.  Both these fairways are virtually at the water table in wet conditions and I would suggest if you went down today and dug a hole on 1R fairway just about anywhere, it would be full of water in a minute.  Draining these two fairways, especially 1R, is virtually impossible due to the depth of the water table.   So if we were to put a cart path in down the entire LHS of the fairway, which is the only safe route you can take, and players kept to the path, you would get off the path and step straight into water or mud, depending on just where you are on the fairway.  The only option for these two fairways would be to sandcap (raise the ground level) across the entire area by a minimum of 300mm or install a properly surveyed path that will allow carts to drive but won't fix the wetness.  

Another example of a cart path not really helping would be on 5R.  A path could easily be constructed down the RHS to link the two existing paths, but that doesn't fix the water lying in the middle of the fairway, some of which I have never seen on that fairway by the way.  So a combination of drainage and paths would be the best result and several methods / materials are being considered for any future path works and some trials to alternatives to concrete are to be trialled.  We are also looking at some fairway re-shaping to assist in water moving off some fairways which will start on 14 and 16W and is why we have the pile of sand adjacent to the carpark at 16W.  The contractors were booked to come in on March 9 to start that work but it started raining and hasn't stopped since.

So the weather plays a part too as concrete trucks aren't light and the ground needs to be firm for them to traverse a golf course as it needs to be for almost any type of golf course construction.  Most good contractors are booked out well in advance and it's not that easy to just get them to come on site when it suits us.  For example I am planning to do some serious renovation work on 4 and 10W fairways as a trial to see if we can move some water off the surface by removing some thatch.  The only time I could get the contractor is for November 9 and 10.  That's our window and if it happens to be raining and the ground is too soft to work then we miss out and will need to re-schedule.

Back to some golf and congratulations to Ryan Fox on his win in The Open last week, he really seems to be a down to earth fellow.  And a seriously fast player too!!.  What amazed me was that there were 3 individual scores of 8 under par 62 through the tournament and only -10 won it!!  Surely some sort of record?