A great week on the courses and I have to say they are looking a treat as we head towards winter.  Two mornings this week under 20 degrees in the shed compound @ 5am with this morning down to 17 so the slide is on although the days are perfect at this time of year. Mondays ''Masters shotgun'' gave us the opportunity to do a pretty much full prep for the comp with a 10am shotgun.  The whole course was blown, mown and raked and looked great for the start.  Nice to hear pro Jared say the course was ''superb'' which it was.  Another shotgun start today on the River course with ..read more

I sent the chart below around this morning and indeed it is a tale of woe.  For a Club that is so reliant on golf cart traffic that is a lot of cart restriction and less than usual player numbers which has a dramatic impact on income obviously.  We have had worse runs than March 16 - 30 in terms of consecutive days of rainfall but that's up there with the best of them.  We will probably nudge past a metre of rain YTD by Sunday night by the look of the forecast.  I have no doubt said it before but this is as wet as the courses can get.  It's not ideal when you are tryin ..read more

About the only thing all this rain is good for is to wash in the fertiliser that was put out this week.  A very healthy 6 tonne of fertiliser was applied to all tees and fairways on Tuesday and Wednesday this week and there is hardly a prill left in sight with the constant rain moving it into the soil profile.  As mentioned last week this application is about getting as much growth as possible as we move into the cooler months and from the look of the fairways at the moment we are well on track.  We do have a long cooler season with good growth not really starting until October ..read more

Things were going swimmingly until Thursday arrived and then we were literally swimming, with 40mm of rain falling in even time which pretty much flooded the courses.  About the only thing that sort of rain is good for is to help compact the trenches on the new irrigation system, which it did.  Unfortunately it meant our first day of installation lost to rain. The irrigation installation on 8W was completed this week and a start was made on 7W with part of the mainline being installed down the LHS of the fairway.  This is one of the classic fairways where no irrigation is really ..read more

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Week one of the irrigation project has now been completed and a highly successful week it was.  The first thing we had to do was isolate all existing irrigation on 9W fairway which was a task in itself as there were 4 x 100 mm pipes feeding the fairway.  We also had to ensure that we had water supply still available to the holes in the corner – 5,6,7 and 8W.  Once this was successfully completed the main line that will feed 9W fairway was trenched in down the left hand side and a 125 millimetre pipe was laid in this trench along with a new 50 millimetre potable water supply pipe ..read more

The excitement is certainly building with the Irrigation Project starting next Monday although there is also a sense of apprehension for what the diggers are going to hit and break under the ground.  Breaking existing irrigation pipes that will be defunct isn't really that much of a problem but we need to keep the old system operating all the way through the project so hitting and breaking anything that is still required is the concern.  There are very few plans and those that are available are not that accurate and there is a myriad of various services under the ground.  It is ..read more

Another weather forecast for the weekend that varies depending on who you listen to although when it is as humid as it's been then there's no doubt we should get some storms and the severity obviously varies over the coast.  Over the past month or so we have been fairly lucky that we have missed some of the worst of the intense rainfall that some others have received.  The chart below tells the rainfall story for the first two months of 2024 and although the figures aren't that extraordinary for us, when the rain is falling is having an effect on the club's trading figures.  Alm ..read more

It's hard to believe another week has flown by and it finished with soddenly wet conditions today.  The water table is still very high and almost any rain will cause pooling but another 70mm wasn't what we were looking for.  Some really heavy rain last Sunday morning just as the comp started caused some fairly severe damage to 9R green but fortunately there was only minor washing of the surface.  There was however quite severe ''pock marking'' almost as if it had hailed golf ball size hailstones.  We had to heavily sand the surface this week and for a green that is just ove ..read more

Another hectic week on the courses with the planting of 9R green on Tuesday then the construction of the new practice green on the short range.  The photo below shows one of 9R stolons on Thursday afternoon about fifty hours after planting with some new white roots evident which is a great start.  You almost couldnt have better conditions to grow a green in with the current heat, humidity and moisture.  It may look a bit strange that the sprinklers are still operating when it's raining but it is absolutely critical that while the new plants have virtually no root system that th ..read more