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.