GENERAL: With winter well and truly here and growth minimal, we put a lot of focus on managing the wear on turf. There will be extra ropes out on course, all teeing ground utilized and pins being cut in a few places we wouldn’t normally cut. All this is done to allow the least possible damage until we get spring growth/recovery and ultimately a better golfing experience.
GREENS: Greens are in good condition. We have had 343mm of rain so far in June so we have managed the maintenance as best as possible but still feel we are producing good “winter” playing surfaces.
The next month is a important month on managing wear and keeping turf cover, if we can get through July as we are now then we are not far from spring and the warmer soil temps, this will naturally see the browntop start to grow again and recover from the winter months and put us in a really good position.
Planned work for the coming month is to mini tyne the greens, topdressing of sand & pedestrian mow our shaded greens.
TEES: Tees are in condition. The par 3's & 2nd tees are getting a bit of wear with divots, we are currently sand/seeding them weekly and will look to get some new sand buckets which we can put out on course.
Tees will get verti drained during July.
FAIRWAYS: The fairways have been sprayed for worm castings & black beetle.
I will be talking to David Ormsby on his visit about coring the fairways in our October reno dates. With no couch conversion for two seasons it means we haven’t done any thatch removal, it would be in our best interest to give them a double pass with ideally a drum corer followed by a “scalp cut” to keep the couch in good condition.
BUNKERS: Bunkers have been in good condition. We have had to repair them a lot this month with the regular rain causing wash outs, the bunker renovation work over the past 6 years has been a huge improvement as we are able to get them repaired and back in play relatively quick ( 7.5 whrs).
There are still three bunkers on course which have sand faces which can wash out quite considerably (7, L/H 8 & L/H 18), this winter, if agreed it would be nice to tackle the 18th bunker. It is a very simple project with no cost, it would keep consistent with our parkland style bunkers and allow for long term time/resource savings on bunker maintenance. The playing surface size wont change at all, its just taking away the sand face and creating a grass face