The wet re-appeared this week and although not high figures of rainfall it certainly has us sodden again although at least we are open to play while many others are closed completely.  The torrential downpour we got at 8am this morning literally flooded the entire course which was a shame as prior to that we were actually not too bad - on the River course at least.  The photo below is of 6R green this morning during the downpour.  No green could cope with that level of rain and the green is doing exactly what the design calls for with the water sheeting off the green.

6R green Friday morning.

 

The rain was well and truly predicted and in preparation we had our big slicer out on some of the wettest fairways and also had our pedestrian aerators doing some solid tining on fairways to try and help move some water off the surface, but to no avail.  The photo below shows 5R fairway on Friday morning with the slice lines clearly visible in amongst the puddles of water.

Still wet on 5R.

At least with The Open on at the moment readers can still get a bit of a golf fix although the Aussies haven't started well.  It's really interesting that a completely new hole has been added to the course for this years event.  It's not totally unheard of as Kingston Heath in Melbourne generally always use their 19th hole in tournament play.  Birkdale has had some serious modifications over the years and this Youtube vid gives a great description of what has been done and why.  It's certainly a very different looking golf course when it's green like it is in the vid.

https://youtu.be/cOr2PfLiwp0?si=45nyexkLtZZMrlrH