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

Greens Renovations - Why renovate greens?

Well, the greens renovations have now been completed. Judging from the scores from today's comp, they are running pretty well with plenty of good scores.

What was done. 

• Greens were scarified with scarifying units fitted to a greens mower. 
• Cored with approximately 15 mm tynes with cores removed from the green - slight hiccup with the main corer breaking down - a borrowed corer and a few extra hours by the boys and they were back on track
• Cores picked up using the sweeping machine - light roll to smooth out the surface
• Amendments added - fertilisers
• Sanding of the greens using the John Deere Gator with the top dresser on the back
• Sand allowed to dry out and then dragged in using a steel drag mat to behind the quad bike
• The greens will then be brushed in again over the next few days with a mat of artificial grass
• They will probably get there first mow after a week or so with the mowers height raised

Why renovate the greens??

Two main reasons are to reduce compaction and thatch build-up. It also enables us to get some amendments into the soil and to the root zone.

Compaction

The greens become compacted from foot traffic and machinery throughout the year and do not allow water and nutrients to effectively get to the root zone. You will notice that the greens would flood very quickly after a small amount of rain. This is due to the compaction of the greens over time. The surface of the greens will dry out more easily if the water cannot get down to the root zone. Coring the greens allows nutrients, oxygen and water to get down to the root zone while adding top dressing to assist with this process.

Thatch is a build-up of organic matter between the surface of the green and the soil. If this is allowed to build up the greens will become spongy, more susceptible to disease and reduce the water infiltration rate. Scarifying and coring help reduce this level of thatch when done regularly. We also groom the greens weekly during the growing season which also help reduce the thatch a little.

Below are some photos to show some of the work done.

Core holes in the 9th green

Top dressing the 18th green

Filling up the top dresser

Renovations next week

The course will be closed on Monday and Tuesday to allow the greens staff to perform the renovation of the greens and collars around the greens.

Week 1 of the Men's Champs

That is the first week of the Men's Championships over. The course held up pretty well and with the wind particularly on Sunday there were not many low scores. The greens were slightly slower than was planned as the green staff were only able to single cut the greens due to a break down of one of the greens mowers on Thursday. With the windy conditions though this was maybe not a bad thing. Ryan, who cut the greens both mornings would have been up super early starting at around 5 am each morning to keep ahead of the field on both 9s. The plan is to double cut each morning next weekend if we can get the second greens mower back in action.

I went around each morning and had a look at the bunkers before play and still noticed most of the rakes had been placed on the edge/slopes of the bunkers. Can players please place the rakes back in the flat of the bunker so that it can't trap a players ball on the slope of the bunker. Can we all work in educating our playing partners each week to put the rakes back in the flat of the bunker. (This is one of my pet hates if you hadn't noticed)

The Thursday crew have continued the pruning of low branches. They have started on the 1st, 10th and 2nd holes. This helps in maintenance enabling the mowers to get around the base of the trees more easily and helps speed up play with less looking for balls. This also helps with the health of the trees and opens up the areas beneath to encourage grass growth. The group will focus on the couple of groups of Casuarinas along the edge of the dam on the 18th hole. These have become large and block the view of the dam. They are also difficult to mow around. The low branches on these will be pruned and the groups thinned out a little to make mowing around then much easier and enable some view of the dam. You will have also noticed that a number of trees on the right of the 6th down to the dam have been pruned and some trees removed so that you can see the dam from the tee and see balls going into the water.

The hazard margin behind the 6th green has been brought in to the edge of the track and a drop zone placed on the bank at the back of the green. The drop zone can be used if you need to take a penalty drop from the hazard or you can play the ball as it lies without grounding your club if in the hazard.