I played today and noted that the fairways and greens are coming along well after the renovations. The back 9 greens were lightly top dressed on Tuesday to help fill the remaining core holes and the front 9 will be done in the next couple of days. The growth on the green is excellent and they are thickening up well. The greens are currently being cut at 4 mm down from 5 mm straight after the renovation. Next week the cutting heights will be lowered to the normal growing season height of 3.2 mm.
After the renovation the front 9 fairways have thickened up well with most of the bare areas now covered with grass. With the rain and warm weather the growth is significant and mowing fairways twice per week is barely enough to keep on top of things. The fairways are back to being mowed at 14 mm which is down from the 18 mm that they were mowed at straight after the renovation. Cam is considering spraying the fairways with a growth retardant to slow the growth a little. This is common practice on the greens during the growing season when the greens can grow significantly throughout the day.
With just over 80 mm of rain recorded over a few days early last week the 2 main dams are now at capacity. This rain has also given the course a good soak and helped kick the growth of the rough along. The rough is just started to thicken up and is now proving some penalty when missing the fairway. I have noticed that the scores are now starting to come down and we need the thicker rough to help provide some defence for the course. The rain has also compacted the old bunkers (un-renovated) and significant work will be done on the bunkers in the next week to get them into reasonable condition before the spring classic.
Please send through any questions or ideas that you may have about what you would like me to cover in future posts.
