Snooze Championships

Well, we have had the first week of the champs and and the course is looking in super condition for the event. The greens were running nicely with some of those down hill puts requiring a bit of attention. There were some pretty good scores on the Saturday with the course fighting back on Sunday with a few harder pin positions and firm fast greens. The greens will be double cut again each morning at 3 mm and should provide a good challenge. A few pictures of the course below. Click on the picture for a larger view.

You may have noticed a few green/blue lines around the margins of a number of the fairways. This is to indicate the fairway mowing lines. The general guidelines for the fairways are:

• Average width of around 25 metres – allowing for some narrower areas and wider areas depending on the hole and the distance from the tee (landing zones), Effective fairway watering is achieved in the area between the fairway sprinklers. In dry conditions any fairway outside this area will not receive adequate water to provide a quality surface. Our fairway sprinklers are currently 20-22 metres apart.
• Keep the fairways on the flat areas that had been designated as fairway – allow first rough cut to be on flat ground also
• Avoid bare areas caused by trees and tree roots
• Emphasise the shape of hole encouraging players to play a certain line especially on holes that have a dogleg
• Rough around bunkers - we are also providing and area of rough around the fairway and green side bunkers as the grass is often of poor quality close to the edge on the bunkers.

Club Championships

The course is in top shape for the club champs starting this weekend. The greens were dusted (light top dress) again on Monday to help smooth the surface and are now being cut at 3 mm which is the normal growing season height of cut. We have also been grooming the greens over the past couple of weeks to thin the grass and smooth the surface. Groomers are vertical blades that are mounted on the front of the greens mower just ahead of the cutting reels and slice into the grass canopy standing the grass up allowing more grass to be taken off the greens. The greens will be double cut on both Saturday and Sunday morning prior to play and should be slightly quicker and rolling more smoothly than in previous weeks.

All other shortly mown areas such as fairways, tees and collars and aprons of greens are being mown twice per week and have come up well after the renovations. The growth on the front 9 fairways is excellent and these have responded well after the renovation.

With the recent strong winds we have lost a number of trees and branches. Staff and volunteers have been working to clean up a lot of this and lets hope that the winds drop soon so we don't lose too many more trees.

Good luck to everyone playing over the next 2 weeks.

Course Update

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.

Renovations nearly complete

The bulk of the renovations are now complete with the front nine fairways, tees, green surrounds, aprons and this week the greens all renovated. These areas have all been cored, scarified, fertilised and top dressed with the tees, fairways and aprons also being seeded with rye grass. With the warm weather at the moment these areas should only take a few weeks to recover so that the course is in top shape for the Spring Classic and the Club Championships. The boys have put in quite a few extra hours in the past couple of weeks to get the job done. Below I have included a few photos so you can see what has been going on. You can click on the images to get a larger view.

3rd fairway after coring and scarifying

Borrowed corer in action on the 6th fairway

Again heading up towards the 6th tee

Cores on the 6th fairway

5th fairway after topdressing, sprinklers on in the background

9th fairway after topdressing

9th green showing the core sapcing

More 9th green

And again

Course renovations in full swing

The course renovations are now in full swing. The tees, greens collars and aprons have now all been cored, scarified, fertilised, seeded and top dressed. The greens staff have now started on the fairways. We plan to renovate the front 9 fairways now and look at the back 9 in Autumn or Spring next year depending and our financial situation. The process is similar to the tees and surrounds where the fairway is cored and scarified and then the bulk of the cores are blown off to the edges of the fairway using a blower where they can be dispersed by a rough cutter. The fairways will then be fertilized and seeded with Rye grass seed and finally top dressed. The top dressing is quite a large project and we do not have the machinery to complete this job and it will be therefore carried out by a contractor. The top dressing with the be rubbed into the holes and grass profile as much as possible with the front 9 back in play for Saturday's comp. Over the next couple of weeks we will also be irrigating the fairways, tees and surrounds to help the seed germinate. There therefore may be a need to irrigate during the day for a short period to keep the soil moist and promote germination.

Then next week we will be renovating the greens. This is the major greens renovation where we use large hollow tines to get as much top dressing into the soil profile as possible. The greens will be therefore slow and sandy for the next few weeks and enable us to get them back into top shape before the Spring Classic and then the club championships. Keep on swinging!!!!

PS. Don't forget to fix your pitch marks on the renovated greens as they will be softer after renovation and prone to pitch marks.