Weather
Extraordinary rainfall fell this month, with the current monthly total being more than 200mm; over three times the average for September. The majority of this fell in two spells, first being the around 6 September with roughly 75mm and the second spell this week with over 120mm having fallen in the last four day with more forecast.
The conditions have given a solid demonstration of the benefits that gravel banding and soil management work bring to surfaces.
Winter will be with us soon although the forecast is a little more sympathetic in the coming days. We will be installing ropes where necessary across the course to direct traffic and reduce wear and tear at points where traffic becomes concentrated, do take note of these, their installation is for the benefit of the course.
Bunkers
The team have been inching through sand exchanges on bunkers and we have more planned for completion before the year end. We will be addressing the eleventh hole next, dependant on access.
One point that needs to be highlighted and is important for two clearly different reasons is where to step in and out of a bunker when playing shots. Our team are seeing more frequent damage to steep and high bunker edges caused by golfers when playing.
I strongly recommend avoiding stepping on steep faces for two reasons:
- Steep faces are inherently unstable and foot traffic is causing collapses that look unsightly and need repairing.
- The likelihood of slipping and falling is greatly increased when taking the steep route.
I recently had a conversation with a member who lost their footing when stepping out of a bunker via a high, steep face and very nearly injured themselves when they slipped.
Look after yourselves and the bunkers, take the low option when entering and leaving bunkers, we place the rakes on the low sides to enable this.
Greens Renovation
Spring renovation was challenging due to ground conditions and we skipped hollow coring three greens. These greens: 11, 16 and 17 will be cored on this round of work but the remaining greens will be solid tined as we have done in previous summer renovation work. Consequentially there will be variation in recovery times between those three surfaces and the rest of the course.
See you on the course.
Jaey Goodchild
Head Greenkeeper
