Just about the perfect week weather wise and great for both playing golf and preparing the courses for play.  The relatively calm conditions allows us the opportunity to get the blowers out and really clean the playing surfaces up, particularly the fairways.  The warmer days have still got the grass just ticking along which is a bonus and just about everything we need to do in readiness for winter has been done.

Winter is the most difficult time for the greens on both courses with the lower growth potential evident but then compounded by the amount of play we receive.  This amount of play puts the greens under a lot of stress and there is nothing that can really be done to grow the grass as the soil temperatures start reducing.  Soil temperature and light intensity are two of the many key factors for successfully growing greens quality turf in winter.  All of the disease and insect control and nutrition has already been done so the greens are in good shape heading in to winter.

Unfortunately winter means lower staff numbers and we have farewelled our summer casuals.  One of our casuals has landed a job on the irrigation installation team at Burleigh GC and another has headed to Europe to work on the super yachts over there during their summer.  We have a couple of part timers who stay on so the crew drops down to thirteen (including the clubhouse gardener) for the winter which is pretty lean for a 36 hole course.  Prior to my arrival the staff numbers were eighteen permanents plus four casuals through summer and on my first day there were nineteen staff available for work and due to the contractors that were employed at the time, the club didn't own any fairway or rough mowers!!  Just gives an indication of how well and hard the current staff work to prepare the courses for play.

And from the past comes a photo of pre concrete buggy paths.  Although not a fan of too much concrete on a golf course it is indeed a necessary evil on a course that is as busy as Coolangatta Tweed.  The installation of the concrete paths certainly tidied the green and tee surrounds up quite considerably. 

16R tee prior to concrete in 2002.

16R tee after.

Quite an exciting week just gone with the delivery of a new tractor / front end loader.  Our old tractor was good but this is a more versatile unit that will be put to use with a number of implements.  One of those implememnts was delivered with the tractor and that is a root pruner.  The machine is actually an aerator but its action allows it to serve as a root pruner as well.  I have hired one before that had two blades and this has been on the blog before but this new unit can have up to six blades which means more cuts through the roots resulting in a better result.  It can cut to about 250mm deep which means that we may encounter some of the hydraulic tubes that feed our irrigation system as a lot of these are very shallow.  The tractor also has a low centre of gravity which assists greatly in safe operation which is paramount with a tractor.  It is planned to cut down the side of every fairway and around all greens and tees over the coming winter.  A trial was carried out down the left side of 4R this week with just four blades operating and surface disruption is minimal.

Surface 2 days after being root pruned with 4 blades.

There is a little discoloration in some of the fairways that has been caused by a herbicide application.  We normally apply a pre-emergent product to the fairways that stops the weeds from germinating but one of the problems with this is that the weeds can become resistant to the product.  So this year we have opted to apply another product that controls the weeds after they have germinated.

Slight discoloration on 9W fway.

And as seen on the main club website and on the various noticeboards, the match committee have decided that rakes will be put back in to bunkers starting Saturday May 4.  This does conform with the R & A and also Golf Australia's recommendation that for general member play rakes should be placed in the bunker.  It is still important that the rake is placed on the flat surface of the bunker in direction of play.

Rake placement from Saturday May 4..

 

Well at least the volume of rain falling has decreased although it is still coming down with 561mm (22+ inches) of rain since February 1 and rain recorded on 50 out of 85 days following the driest January on record.  The courses are now taking a long time to dry out with the water table as high as it can just about be in non-flood times.  There is a wet patch on 6R fairway that is nowhere near any irrigation pipes and the water is coming out on the surface so is preumably groundwater.  The same thing has happened before on that fairway after a prolonged wet period and is an indication of just how wet it is.

One of the benefits of the rain is the flushing effect it can have on the soil structure, particularly on the greens.  I have mentioned previously that the irrigation water supplied to us is our lifeblood but it does have high sodium and chloride levels which do build up after time.  A soil test was taken on February 1 before the rains , then again on March 14 prior to the really high falls and again April 1.  The total soluble salts on 18R green were at a high of 1544ppm on Feb1 then dropped to 535ppm in March and then 267ppm in April which has had an obviously dramatic effect on turfgrass health.

Elsewhere on the courses the turfgrass is starting to slow down as we head towards winter.  Mowing heights have been lifted on tees and fairways and frequency of mowing operations is also reducing.  Divots on fairways (and greens) will become prominent now with slow recovery so more sand will be visible on the fairways.  That is as long as people use their sand buckets which is sometimes a challenge as the photos below show from the past 2 weeks.  Generally it is not worth replacing the divot unless it is very deep and long and even then some sand over the top helps to return to a level surface.

No attempt at repair.

Divot replaced on the left but sand would be better.

   

And when you do sand your divots it would help if the sand was levelled out by first of all not over filling the divot and then standing on the sand to smooth it out, unlike this effort below.

And then there was this one that was well sanded but unfortunately it was on 5W green during todays members competition!!
 

 

Thanks.

And from the history books this week is a shot from the early 80's with work being done on 9R green.  The old course maintenance shed can be seen in the background where the current TifEagle practice green sits.  And yes that trailer on the left is still in use today!!

Pre clubhouse extension.

 

Not really the Friday finish that we wanted for the junior girls amateur but you can't control the weather and have to work with it as best you can which the crew did really well today pushing water off greens to make them playable until the heavens really opened up.  28mm of rain got dumped on the courses in around an hour but as I have mentioned many times before the construction of the River greens and bunkers meant that they became fully playable again within 20 minutes of the rain stopping.  The players returned to the course and completed their 3rd round and with no time for the final round the tournament was shortened to 54 holes.  Maybe I jinxed the tournament by buying an extra 3 squeegees which is what we use to push the water off the greens.  The lead up to and the week itself was a great buzz for the crew with a lot of overtime and effort put in.  I couldn't have been happier with the way the course played and it just shows what sort of turf quality we can produce with enough mowers and manpower.  Thanks again to Toro for the loan of the extra 2 fairway mowers that helped make the course look so good.  The West course also got a bit more attention after the girls had started and also looked great until the rain.

Not how we wanted 1R fairway to look before the final round

The only dampener on the week for us was the way the players treated the course.  They all carried a sand bucket from what I could see but they were hardly used.  Fortunately there is still enough growth to get recovery but I get really annoyed when the club opens its doors to these so called elite players to have this sort of golfing etiquette shown.  Rant over!!  Having said that there was some incredible golf played with a 15 year old 10 under at one stage of her first round and finished 8 under.  That was backed up in round 2 with a 5 under 68 from a 14 year old New Zealander.  Incredible talent on show.

Didn't even step on them to flatten them!!

The nights are getting much cooler and the daylight hours are reducing rapidly so mowing heights on some of our shaded tees will lift next week and if the weather cooperates we will get the tees fertilised next week as well.

397mm or just under 16 inches since March 1 which includes 174mm (just under 7 inches) in the past 10 days.  So yes it's wet and it has unfortunately not helped with course preparations for the junior girls tournament next week.  I don't recall seeing the fairways stay as wet as they have this week.  Unlike last week when virtually all fairways got mown we were unable to mow much of the West course and couldn't get near 1 and 9 on the River.  Hopefully the weather improves for next week.

Having the 2 loan fairway mowers certainly makes a difference with the fairways that can be mown coming up very well.  A bit dis-heartening when some hacker takes a divot within an hour of mowing and shows no respect to his following players though.

11R fairway - thanks for that!!

 A distinct change in the weather this week apart from the rain with morning temperatures in the workshop compound dipping below 20° for the first time since early November which is three weeks earlier than last year so it will be interesting if there is any distinct difference between winter this year and 2018?

Not that much to report except rain!!  Coupled with the warmer temperatures we are having a late surge in growth and are struggling to keep up, particularly in the roughs.  Another 85mm this week with some very heavy downpours unfortunately undid all the good work that had been done in the bunkers two weeks ago.  It is pretty disheartening for the staff that spend their time fixing the washouts then having to do it all over again.  The 85mm takes us to a total of 312mm for the month of March which is 12.5 inches in the old scale.  The courses were very slow to dry this week even with quite low tides and a couple of blocked drains didn't help.  There were no blocked drains on 1R though and the photo below was taken on Thursday evening and that indicates just how high the water table is and how wet the courses are.  Not quite as wet as two years ago on March 31, 2017 though when the remnants of Cyclone Debbie descended upon us in the other photo below.

1R Thursday 8 hours after the last downpour.

1R March 31 2017.

Most of the fairways got cut today which was a great effort in the conditions and our primary equipment supplier Toro has loaned us 2 x fairway mowers so we can increase the frequency of mowing in the lead up to the junior girls tournament in a fortnight.

Unfortunately the heavy rain virtually washed the sand away that had been applied to the River greens as part of the recent mini renovation on them.  The sand is critical in assisting the levelling of the surface of the greens and diluting the thatch layer.  At this stage I doubt we will get anymore out prior to the girls tournament and after grinding all our greensmower mowing units this week I don't really want the sand dulling the blades.

Well I certainly got my wish granted for the rain last week with exactly 200mm or 8 inches in the old scale falling over four days.  56mm tipped out of the gauge on Saturday morning followed by 83mm on Sunday then falls of 24mm and 37 mm on Monday and Tuesday.  To say we and the surrounding areas needed it was a huge understatement and we are now full to the brim with the water table right up combined with the high tides.

The bunkers wore the brunt of the damage and have now been restored to their former glory.  A little bit of sand replacement will be required which will take place over the coming weeks.

With the cloudy wet weather early in the week the small renovation on the River greens was scaled back as it is quite late to be doing the greens and an eye has to be kept on attaining and maintaining a fully grassed surface heading towards winter.  The greens will have a couple of sandings in the lead up to the junior girls event in early April.

The combination of the moisture and heat really has the grass growing at the moment so it is all hands on deck operating virtually every mower we have.  The bunker restoration works took up a lot of labour time this week so now that is all but finished we can get back to focusing on the grass.

And speaking of bunkers……………….

Just WOW!!           And then WHY??