Very disappointing to have to cancel this weeks tournament especially when the course was in such good condition last Friday, which now seems a lifetime ago.  The courses have handled the rainfall particularly well and we were mowing debris off the fairways this morning without any worries.  The problem we have now is tidal inundation which is rendering both courses unplayable as there are several holes on each course that are un-walkable.  See the photos below of a selection of areas just on this mornings high tide.

1 & 9R fairways from 10R green.

Front 18W tee.

17W from the tee full water carry!

9R tee.

9W fairway dry enough to mow though!?

All the water in the photos above is from tidal inundation.  We have received 338mm since it started raining on Saturday.  In the same time the airport has received just 236mm. 

And this is the seagulls last Saturday morning just after it started raining on 4W dam.  Maybe a sign to look out for in future??

 

When it rains it rains that's for sure.  We came in on Saturday afternoon to do some prep work for the Pro am and it started raining at around 4.30pm and didn't stop until about 5am.  250mm fell in that time with the bulk in the front between 11pm and 2am.  A lot of the water had already drained off by the morning but then the combination of a high tide and water coming down the river from upstream pushed the water in on to the courses.  The river broke its bank behind 1R green which is always the first place to go and it must have been fairly high by the high water mark on the speed hump below.  A lot of water has drained off the courses again by 4pm Sunday but quite amazingly the forecast is for the worst to arrive overnight Sunday.  We have not lost any trees at this stage although once the ground gets wet that's when that may well happen but there is certainly some debris out there.

 

Debris everywhere.

High water mark on speed hump..

It never rains - it pours!!  A really disappointing forecast for the next few days with the Tweed Coast Open set to be played from Sunday.  The crew have done an outstanding job in getting the West course ready for play but it may well be to no avail.  Even though the West does get a little wetter than the River, the volume of rain predicted would soak any golf course so unfortunately we just need to grin and bear it.  On my first day at Victoria GC all those years ago the then President said to me ''you will be working with Mother Nature and you can't beat her - so work with her''.  Very good advice that I have thought about often throughout my career, albeit a bit too often at Cool Tweed!.  This is what's coming rainfall wise if you haven't already seen.

 

After 1500mm of rain fell till the end of March it looked like 2020 might be on track for the wettest year on record but then things slowed and we have had only 666mm since, which for a lot of Australia is a years rainfall total.  Maybe that will change if we do get the expected rain over the coming week.  Although we need a fair bit as the wettest year on record was 1906 when 3,192mm fell which is the only time more than three metres has been recorded at Tweed Heads.  Year to date we are sitting at 2180mm which is a whole lot more than last years 962mm and the average for this location at 1665mm.  The groundwater levels have certainly dropped rapidly in the past few weeks but they should be well and truly replenished in the coming week.  

5W didn't quite dry up this year.

 

 

A very busy two weeks on the courses with the West greens having a mini renovation last Monday week.  The granular fertiliser that was applied has had the desired effect and the greens have responded and are growing quite well.  The extra leaf slows the speed down somewhat but the benefit is that the turf is very healthy and in good shape to get groomed up for the upcoming Pro am.

The dryness continues and once again we were hand watering tees.  This was primarily to conserve water as the sprinklers don't operate efficiently in the wind and the hand water puts the water exactly where we want it to go.  The greens have also had some hand water applied for the same reason as the tees.  We have got quite a blotchy result on several fairways following the fertiliser application a couple of weeks ago with the hydrophobic soils literally repelling the water and thus not allowing the fertiliser to move through and release evenly through the profile.  A good fall of rain will fix the problem and hopefully that will happen sooner than later.

The big job this week was excavating the outer edges of 1R green where the encroachment had occurred.  The job went without a hitch and the areas were stolonised and planted on Wednesday with material harvested from the central part of the green to ensure uniformity.  It was basically the same operation as we did on the West greens with all the soil profile down to the drainage gravel layer removed and replaced with fresh sand which ensures all non desirable material is removed.  To date on the West greens there has been no re-growth of unwanted grasses and I would expect the same with 1R.  The difficulty will be keeping the foreign Couch in the collar from invading as it does so readily on 13R green.  The 328 is such an open turf that it allows the runners to invade very easily compared with the TifEagle on the West that is such a tight surface.  The weather is now on our side with good temperatures evident which will assist in a fast recovery.  

Excavation @ 1R down to drainage layer.

 

 

 

First load of fresh sand in.

 

 

 

And the wind continues to blow which is quite usual for this time of year with the Eucalypts in particular losing a lot of leaves and also bark on a number of them.  It just makes for a very messy time with continual clean up underway.
   

18R tee almost unplayable.

 

18W fairway under leaves.

 

 

And speaking of clean up, one of the tasks we have to perform on an all too regular basis is removing illegally dumped rubbish from the levee bank road, not to mention many other areas around the course boundaries.  It's time consuming and not a very pleasant job.

Off to the waste facility.

 

 

A windy and messy week on the courses with the Gum trees losing a lot of leaves and bark which is natural for this time of year.  At least we don't have deciduous trees like the southern States where they really do make a mess.  A friend of mine on a course with such trees commented to me once that ''people who say they love the colours of autumn have never worked on a golf course raking them up''!!

The West fairways got fertilised as planned on Tuesday and for a little while on Tuesday afternoon it looked like we were going to get an unexpected storm but it unfortunately fizzled.  So we had to rely on the irrigation system to water it in which isn't perfect but that's the way it has to be.  The motorised buggy traffic also breaks a lot of the fertiliser up which again isn't perfect but unless we close for a few days, can't be avoided.  The problem with the buggy traffic is that it breaks the coating that is on each individual granule and releases the fertiliser earlier than required. They also cause a bit of a burn as they drive over the fairway as per the picture below.

 

Wheel burn on 7W fairway.

Some even got picked up and tracked acoss 16W green

 

The recovery of the unwanted green couch in 1R green really accelerated with the warmth of last weekend to the point that we are not going to be able to control it.  As the picture of the rhizome showed last week the depth of where the shoots are coming from makes it impossible to hand weed them out.  After consultation with Golf Management Committee it has been decided to excavate the perimeter of the green out and refill with fresh material as per the operation on the West greens and then stolonise.  This will remove all the rhizomes and ensure that it is weed free.  These works are proposed to commence on Monday December 30. 

And I was reading some old golf journals during the week and came across this classic photo of a very classy follow through.  What really caught my eye though was the footwear??!!

Good follow through.

 

Not on my greens thanks!!

 

 

We got another uneven result from the recent application of growth regulator to the fairways which was done in the last week of October.  We had a problem with the previous application and thought it was solved but alas it wasn't.  The difficult aspect is that it takes two weeks for the result to become evident so it is hard to know what has and is happening but we think we are on to it this time.  It is frustrating as we have used the same machine / technology since 2004 and never had the problem before and have probably sprayed eight times a year since then.

18W fairway streaks.

 

1R green has put on some leaf at last but as mentioned last week is much slower than expected.  We did a little bit of investigation this week by removing some plugs from the green and unfortunately found some rather juicy couchgrass rhizomes 50mm under the surface.  We can only try and keep painting herbicide on to any new invasive shoots while we wait for the 328 grass to start moving and cover in.

Rhizomes next to arrows.

 

The weather is now warming up to the stage that we should start to get some growth in the fairways and to assist that the West course fairways will be fertilised next Tuesday weather permitting.  The extra motorised buggy traffic with the Covid rules and extra play has really put some strain on the fairways in particular with wear at an all time high in my time here.

 

8mm in the storm last Saturday afternoon / evening was certainly most welcome.  Despite all the predictions of a wet summer we are still pretty dry at the moment.  As mentioned previously the constant overnight wind has quite an adverse effect on the operation of the sprinklers so a couple of calm nights would be much appreciated.  Some of the roughs, particularly Kikuyu areas have started to grow, and I was asked this week why we don't apply growth regulators to the roughs.  Well on some of the shorter rough we can and do but on the longer rough there is what is known as a ''spray shielding effect'' which is when the length of the grass prevents the spray solution from being able to penetrate through the canopy and make contact with the leaves as required.

The grassing of the edges at 1R green are progressing much slower than anticipated.  There is also the problem of rhizomes of the foreign couchgrass now popping their heads up as can be seen in the photo below.  It appears that we got an excellent kill of all the surface leaf / plant matter but as the rhizomes tunnel under the surface then sprout we weren't able to make contact with them.  The one below is a good 75cm into the green.  We have been painting them to try and control them but time will tell if they get too invasive again.  The ball in the top photo is next to a shoot from a rhizome and the lower photo is a close up, which also shows how much new 328 growth there is which is hard to see from standing so that is encouraging.  It just needs to grow!!

Distance from the edge.

Close up of the new shoot.