A total of 170mm for last week and we certainly dodged a bullet on Sunday afternoon when the low pressure system hit landfall south of us.  It could have been so much worse than just being as wet as we are.  The River came within 75mm (three inches) of coming over the levee bank on Monday mornings high tide.

The heavy rain has caused quite a bit of wash on the River greens which is a combination of some of the de-thatching material that didn't get picked up and unfortunately also some of the amendments that were either applied or mixed in the sand.  The greens are recovering very slowly and no sun following the renovation has growth levels at a very low rate despite the fertiliser.  They will get mown today and then slowly be bought back down to normal mowing height over the coming weeks.  But it will be a slow recovery period although some good high temperatures have been forecast for late in this week which will help enormously. 

I will be taking some leave for a couple of weeks so the Blog will also have a rest.

Washlines indicated.

 

Probably the toughest greens renovation I have done here thanks to the weather.  Constant showers throughout Monday then a dump of 36mm Monday night and more rain through Tuesday really hampered the operation.  We had a similar storm after day one last year that caused significant ''wash'' on the greens as well, that has to be rubbed off before any other works which further delayed us.  I have said many times before that the drier the conditions the better.  What made it more frustrating was the rain during the day seemed to be localised on us and you could see blue skies and clear conditions to the west throughout the day.  The wet conditions also made picking up the cores more laborious with almost every core having to be hand shovelled off the greens.  We did get a break on Tuesday afternoon when things dried a little but it was a hard slog.

It was too wet to get any of the hand applied amendments out on Tuesday so that was reserved for Thursday when lo and behold it rained again.  We persevered though and kudos to the three staff who battled through some pretty disgusting weather to get the job done.  The weather was so bad that only six veterans turned up to play and the ladies completely cancelled which at least gave us the course to ourselves. 

The topdressing sand was also an issue as it needs to be dry to rub in properly and that was an almost impossibility given the weeks weather.  The sand we use is amended with a number of products that are blended at the sand suppliers yard.  One of the products is humate and it and the sand it is being mixed with need to be relatively dry to obtain a satisfactory blend.  Unfortunately with all the rain we have been getting that hasn't been possible so there are some small ''balls'' on the greens which are just compacted humate and will get broken up by the mowers when we get to them.

The greens will look a little different from each other as some were only hollow tyne aerated while other were both de-thatched and hollow tyned.  It was probably the softest renovation the greens have had due to the weakness of the turf after a very poor turf growing winter. 

Seemed to be fine out west most of the week.

 

Balls of humate.

We were probably lucky that the idiot four wheel driver who decided a golf course was a good place to do some burnouts only damaged the end of the long range and not nearby greens, tees or fairways.

End of the long range.

 

And very pleasing to see that Royal Melbourne GC Superintendent Richard Forsyth was inducted in to the Victorian golf industry hall of fame last night.  It's not often that Supers are included in such illustrious company but when you are one of the best in the world then it's fitting that the golf industry recognises you as we are a vital cog in the game.  I spoke to Richard today and he quipped ''Illustrious company indeed and I have the distinction of being the worst golfer in the group''.  Congratulations to a very good old friend.

 

Much of this week was spent preparing for the River green renovation that starts next week, including machinery preparation and an application of fertiliser to the greens to get them moving.  If ever you needed convincing that renovating greens is necessary then you need look no further than the turnaround on 2R green which has been remarkable to say the least.  Temperatures aren't still where I would like them to be, especially to renovate, although I sat on the motorbike seat on Thursday and it was almost too hot to sit on which is a first for the season and at 5am Friday morning we topped 20 degrees in the compound for the first time this season so hopefully we are on the move upward.

The forecast doesn't look good for next week so the renovation won't actually be fully planned out until Monday morning when we get a feel for what the weather will be bring for the week.  It will be a very different renovation from past years with the many shaded greens not being scarified or de-thatched as they are just still too weak.  All greens will be hollow tine aerated and a range of soil amendments applied to replace what has been leached out of the soil profile by the constant rainfall.   If time / weather permits the greens collars will be scarified as well.

Thoughts are with pretty much the southern half of Australia who are currently dealing with floods and if you look at the actual rainfall figures they haven't been too high (compared to what we get) but the ground just can't take any more.  At Yarrawonga & Border GC they have been ''waiting'' to flood as water will be released from dams upstream and the flood plains will go under.  Most of the courses on the Yarra River in Melbourne are under with parts of Kew GC four metres under. Also thinking of those in the USA with the devastating effects of Hurricane Ian on communities and golf courses with some 1200 golf courses suffering some damage from Hurricane related weather.  That works out to be nearly 8% of the US market and there are still courses closed now.

I have had a few readers ask about the ''worm farmers'' that I mentioned last week.  Well they were a contracting company that provided mowing services to clubs and proposed to collect ALL the clippings and compost them to create a worm farm and then extract some liquid fertiliser from the process.  They were doomed to fail here because I think they obviously underestimated the growth rates that we can experience and one of the photos below shows their ''fleet'' of mowers that were supposedly going to mow the entire property apart from greens, tees and green surrounds.  The fleet consisted of just two five gang fairway mowers, one seventy two inch outfront rough mower and one sixty inch mid mount tractor rough mower.  The other photos show some of the resultant ''mowing'' that they were able to achieve.

The four strong ''fleet''.

   

9R fairway looking back down the fairway.

9R front of the green.

 

8R fairway on the dogleg.

It's hard to believe that six years ago today I was writing about the end of week one of the conversion of the back nine greens on the West course to TifEagle and in particular 13W, which was ready for planting that day.  The way the weather was then is so far different to this year it's almost scary.  We were having much warmer consistent temperatures at the time rather than what we are experiencing this year, with the variable weather conditions continuing this week.  So much so that I doubt I would want to plant any greens just now.  Looking back it was amazing that throughout the two year project we were only affected by heavy rain once and it did no major damage.  I couldn't imagine trying the same project over the past two summers as the type and volume of rain we have been getting would destroy new greens construction works. 

13W green starts October 2016.

In 2017 we started the front nine greens and this was my opening comment on the blog on October 6, 2017:

Well it was only 45mm of rain that fell but it is some of the most welcome rain I have seen here.  A nice soaking rain that was just what we needed with very little run off.  For the first time since I have been here I recorded a zero rainfall month during September.  Indeed since July 20 we had received just 4.6mm of rain until last Sunday!!

How things have changed??!!

Access road @ rear 1W green October 2017.

Back to the present and a short week on the courses but plenty happening including some vandalism on Monday night when we lost nine flagsticks, a couple of signs and multiple tee markers.  No real turf damage which was fortunate and it looked like they were on foot as a couple of the flagsticks finished up in Tweed City.  Not really what we wanted after a fairly wild long weekend of weather had tree debris strewn all over the courses and the vandalism just added to the to-do list as we started to put the place back together.  In amongst all the other course works this week there were twelve repairs effected on the irrigation system.  Despite the rainfall we still need an operational system and it is literally hanging by a thread. 

Very sad to hear of the passing of Phil Dark last week.  Phil came to the club in 2000 after some of the most tumultuous times in the club's history and together with determined Presidents and Boards put the club on an exceptionally stable footing, which pretty much remains today.  Things were pretty lean back in the day following the disastrous decision to tender out mowing of the courses to the ''worm farmers'' as they were known and there had been some major upheaval in the clubhouse as well in the late nineties.  Phil was a hard but fair taskmaster and kept an incredibly tight grip on finances and the general management of the club but at the same time backed his managers to the hilt.  Vale Phil.

And a very happy lunchroom on Friday morning after a successful tip at the Mornington horse races on Thursday afternoon.  One of my nephews is a professional punter and he text me a tip for Thursday afternoon with the advice ''will open at around $20 and will come in a bit to probably $15 so a good each way bet''.  Well he got that part wrong as it drifted and depending on what State you backed it in paid anywhere between $27 and $30!!   I told the boys as they were about to leave and suggested that my nephew had only ever given me a handful of tips over his thirty year career as a successful punter, and that the few that I had got had never missed so they were all on it for a great result. 

Despite the slightly warmer temperatures the turf on both courses is still struggling after the effects of the floods and a long cloudy winter, not to mention the wear from golf carts.  The photo below is the buggy path leading to 18R fairway where it has been roped off for the past six weeks.  Despite being a heavily shaded area to turf has greened up and is in fairly reasonable condition with no golf cart traffic over this time.  The cart traffic is really doing some damag with many groups with four carts and just the sheer number of players going through the courses.  Most Fridays now have over five hundred players booked in which is staggering.

18R cart path.

It will be interesting to see what happens this year with the seasonal weather.  The Jacaranda tree I have been observing over the years flowered eight days later than last year and the Rainbow Bee Eater birds have appeared a week later than last year.  Another thing I monitor is when the fairway Couch throws up a seedhead and that happened one week earlier than last year.  I don't really know if any of it is related to turfgrass health but it's interesting to note.  What we really need is some real heat and sunny conditions.  I am not looking forward to the health of the turf if we do get the wet summer as predicted and the player levels and cart traffic continue as they have been.

And one of my favourite photos from a few years back from an avid bird photographer. 

Incoming meal.

 

I don't know if we should ever let Golf NSW near us ever again!!  That or the Tweed Coast Open is permanently jinxed.  We have tried to run the Tweed Coast Open about six times and rain has intervened each time.  In February this year we just got it done the day before the big flood and this week we were looking ok and got the Pro am in then whammo.  You can't really blame the weather bureau though as they forecasted Thursday's rain seven days earlier so we were well and truly prepared.

Part of that preparation was to solid tine the West greens on Tuesday to assist with moving water off the putting surface in the event of rain which worked a treat when the rain wasn't torrential.  The video below shows the greens being solid tined and the minimal effect on ball roll as a result. 

 

 

 

We only went about  75mm deep which was just enough to create a channel (see photo below) for the water to move through.  It also had the added bonus of getting some much needed oxygen to the rootzone as well.  All that benefit with no surface disruption. 

 

Aeration hole on the side of the hole.

But when you get the torrential downpour we got on Friday morning no green will sustain that amount.  This is 18W green at around 8.15am Friday morning.  Within five minutes of the rain easing it was bone dry which is a combination of the construction which allows the water to sheet off the green and aeration holes allowing the water to move through the surface.

 

18W green Friday morning in the rain.

 

 And as noted previously - it's never a good sign when the seagulls come onto the course!

 

Thursday morning this week.

We ''only'' received 140mm but by the look of the courses you would think there was 440 which is what fell in some parts of the hinterland and I trust any readers who live in the worst hit areas are safe and sound.  That 140mm takes us to a YTD rainfall total of 2336mm which is well on the way to beat the record of 3193mm for this location.  Let's hope we don't break the record or even come close to it.
 

I mentioned last week that 2R green was renovated and it had an almost immediate response.  This week we trimmed back the trees at the rear of the green and even though they are on the south side of the green the increase in light has been dramatic, not to mention the airflow.  This can only have a further positive effect on the green.  The photo below is at 4pm today.  Normally the green would be in full shade and very dark.  Unfortunately I didn't get a ''before'' photo but it's pretty obvious. 

Let there be light.

And speaking of trees, the photo below is not what you want to see at 4.45am on your morning rounds.  Fortunately the rain kept the players away so we had less traffic to deal with as we had to divert all cars on to 18W fairway to access the clubhouse while the clean up took place.  I had two staff members placed with ''stop / slow'' signs and three cars didn't even stop at the first checkpoint even though it was daylight.  Makes you wonder what they do on the roads?? 

A 5.20am phone call to our Bobcat contractor Trevor and his willingness to change the mornings plans and come and help clean up was a big bonus.  One of the reasons I always try and look after our contractors is for when we are in an hour of need.  Thanks Trevor.

Before.

During.

After.