August 2014

The dry winter weather has been great for course condition and also for getting some work done on the course. Some of our winter projects have been to trim all low branches to make mowing easier and to allow better access for golfers. We have been leveling sprinklers around greens and auditing the tee sprinklers to ensure optimum performance.

After the construction of the new maintenance shed, we have sorted and cleaned up around our sheds, allowing better access to equipment.

The biggest project we have recently undertaken is the fairway irrigation on the 1st fairway.

Fairway irrigation is an important ongoing project, as it makes the course better for both golfers, and staff members.

On fairways without irrigation, we have to drag long hoses out and these obstruct play for days on end. It takes days to water some fairways, as the sprinklers only throw 10 meters and we have to have them in the same spot for up to two hours in summer. Since it takes about a hour for a staff member to do a complete lap of the course, moving all the sprinklers, this means a staff member is tied up for the best part of two or three days, unable to assist in normal day to day operations. With fairway irrigation, we can apply water to the whole fairway in one hit, during the night, meaning that the watering does not interrupt play at all 

This also helps with chemical application, as some chemicals and fertilisers need to be washed into the root layer to be properly effective.

We are currently putting the finishing touches on the 1st fairway irrigation. The fairway has been separated into two sections for pressure and flow management. The green half of the fairway has been completed and activated, while the tee end, just needs to be bolted into place to be operational.

Bad weather holds up bolting the main line into the tee half, as the pit that the fittings are in, becomes muddy, and we do not want any of this sludge to get into the main lines as this could potentially clog up sprinklers around the course.

Luckily, the rain also means that we do not need the irrigation for the first fairway just yet, and after it clears up, we will have plenty of time to finish this project.

The heavy rain recently, has filled the dam to capacity, meaning that we have plenty of water after this rain all clears up.

April 2014

During our last blog entry, I wrote about the sandstone capping at the 10^th. This project is still ongoing and we have been granted an extension on how much area we can work with, greatly increasing the volume of sandstone we can accept. This means we will end up with a much better final product, which is worth the extra time it will take to get the materials. We are so far impressed by the quality of material we are getting and will only accept the best quality sandstone.

In the picture below, the area of cleared weeds on the left is the new approved fill spot. This has doubled the area.

We have recently finished two large projects at the 5^th green. The path between the trees towards the 6^th tee has been widened and is now open to carts again.

We have also reshaped the whole section below the granite path leading to the green, creating a gentler slope and allowing the whole area to be more playable.

Construction has been completed on an extension to the maintenance shed above the 12^th tee. This provides staff with more room to park our fleet of equipment and provide Lance, our equipment technician, with better working conditions, a perfectly smooth concrete base to aid in the exact calibration and setting of machinery and an area for more work benches and a hoist.

A section of ryegrass on the right of the 13^th green has been removed and replaced with harder wearing couch. The area has been smoothed out, removing a dip, meaning players will not be punished for missing the green by a small margin.

We are currently conducting a trial for the rough and fairway on the 18^th. By rounding the end of the fairway and creating a strip of rough we hope to accomplish two things.

Firstly, we hope to aid balls that are just short of the green rolling all the way back down the hill while secondly and primarily, the longer turf will resist wear better, removing the large dead patch that forms from cart and foot traffic leaving the 18^th green

Over summer the dam looked very low. This was not quite true though. The dam still had 1.8m of depth, meaning very roughly 5 million litres of water remaining for irrigation. During the continued dry spells of summer, we did not have to stop watering tees or fairways, which are the first to have irrigation dropped, prioritizing greens. We have lasted through the heat of summer and now the dam is almost full and we can expect continued cooler weather, meaning less irrigation will be required.