Huge Storms

Last night we had around 60 mm of rain in some large thunder storms. The rain was much needed as we had not had significant rainfall for some time our stocks in the dams were getting quite low. The dam at the 5th is now full and the main dam is around 4 feet from full. The rain has also given the entire course a good soak with many of the fairways suffering with the extreme hot weather.

The course seems to have held up quite well with the bunkers the exception. Many of the bunkers have considerable water in them and quite a bit of damage has been done with sand and soil washed off the faces. The bunkers will require considerable work now to get them back up to scratch. We have also lost most of a large gum tree in the garden bed near the second putting green. A large branch has fallen across the path to the 10th tee blocking the path.

Tree on path to 10th

More tree

And more ....

Bunker on the 9th

Damage to bunker the 9th

Water coming from the dam behind the 15th into the main dam

Another angle of the pipe from the 15th

Overflow pipe out of the main dam

Re-modelling of the 17th Tees

We are looking to re-model the 17th tee to provide a greater variety of length across the 4 par three holes. We currently have 3 long par 3s where some players may be hitting a similar club. By shortening the 17th  players will be able to hit a shorter club than on the 9th and 13th hole. I will put up some material in the club also. Feel free to leave comments on the blog, speak to myself directly or leave comments with the office. Below is what is proposed.

Aim:

• Shorten the Blue and White tees to provide greater variety of length (this should assist in bringing the White course rating back to 72)
• Change the angle of the Blue and White tee to bring the right bunker more into play
• Enlarge the Red tee and incorporate the Green tee into the teeing ground

Proposal

• Relocate Blue and White tees to the right hand side of the path behind the Red tee – elevated above the height of the Red tee
• Teeing area to be around 20m long by 10m wide
• Red tee enlarged to incorporate the Green tee and widened slightly
• New suggested distances: Blue - 156, White -148 (approximately 1 club more than the 4th hole)
• Bottom tee on the left of the path is to be retained as an over flow tee – top 2 levels to be removed

Work program

• Approximately 6 trees to be removed 
• Garden bed and seat behind Red tee to be relocated 
• Pipe placed under tee to take water run-off – this would be connected to existing pipe under the path 
• Fill placed in area of tee to create an area elevated above the Red tee 
• Teeing area laser levelled 
• Irrigation installed – approximately 8 sprinklers plus pipe and valve required 
• Turf from existing tees used to turf as much of the new tee as possible – remaining area seeded

Green areas show new teeing ground

Happy New Year

Hi all, welcome back after the Christmas break. Apologies to all those that have missed the blog updates.

The boys are flat out at the moment trying to keep the course alive. With the extreme weather we are experiencing it is difficult to keep the entire course alive as we are struggling to get enough water on the course each night  with the irrigation system and the time available to water.

What has been happening:

• Some drainage has been put it on the front left of the 1st green to dry this area out where water has been surfacing.
• We are trialling a sand box on the 4th tee so that players can fill divots when waiting for the green to clear. This will be filled regularly with a sand and seed mix. If successful we will purchase further boxes for the other par 3 tees as these are the most divoted.
• Removal of garden beds - we are removing a number of garden beds around tees where maintenance if difficult and the beds have become unsightly. Work has begun on the beds on the 2nd tee and will continue over the coming weeks. The bulk of this work is being completed by a number of members who volunteer their time during the week. For anyone interested there is a regular group on Tuesday and Thursday that do work around the course.
• Fairways aerated with an Aerway - this machine punched slits into the fairways are assist water and air getting into the soil.

Sand box on the 4th tee

Thursday volunteers removing sleeping around garden beds

Aerway used to aerate the fairways

New tees mower

The club has recently purchased a second hand greens mower which is now in action cutting tees and short surrounds around the greens. This has improved the quality of cut of these surfaces and replaces the old greens mower that we were using for this job which was on its last legs. The mower is a Toro Greens mower and looks something like the one below:

Course Update

The greens are coming along well after the major renovation for the year. They were lightly top dressed again on the Monday of this week to fill in any of the remaining core holes and smooth the surface. They are currently being cut at 4 mm and will be back to the normal cutting height of 3.2 mm by next weekend. The course is playing pretty easy at the moment with the softer and slower greens and the harder fairways.

Some pruning and thinning of the Casuarinas beside the main dam on the left of the 18th has made maintenance mowing around these much easier. This also enables players to get a view of the dam and the green from the tee. Players will now have a better chance of seeing if their ball has entered the hazard and hence will be able to make a better judgement of the next course of action.

Rake placement in bunkers continues to be a problem with most players leaving rakes on the side of the bunker. Some of these are placed neatly up on the slope of the bunker and it appears that players don't know what to do. After raking the bunker the rake should be placed in the base of the bunker pointing in the direction of play. Below are a couple of photos of 'how not to' and 'how to' place the rakes in a bunker. The first photo is how I found the rake in a bunker on the 17th.

Wrong way

Right way