Course Report – July 2023

Although the weather hasn’t been great to get out on the course, we are still keeping busy with a lot of behind the scenes work and jobs that usually get put off over our busier periods and allows for staff to take annual leave as it doesn’t have a major impact on operations. Over the coming week our annual cleaning of our irrigation dams takes place, this involves draining the dams and hosing down the thick sludge off the liner. It can be a very messy job at times but a necessity for the upcoming irrigation season. Whilst the weather is less favourable for being out on the course we are also busy refurbishing our greens mowers with new bearings, bushings and blades. These mowers are now in their 6^th year of operation and have done 2500hrs (equates to roughly 150,000km in a vehicle talk) and although we have new greens mowers on order these mowers will stay with us and be pushed down the order and used for tee’s & collars so it is imperative that we keep the up the maintenance.

Our newest part time employee BGC member Des Allen has been a part of the team for 1 month now and has been a very welcomed and great addition to the team. Shortly we will also be welcoming former BGC member Russell Perkins who will be also joining us in a similar role to Des working 2 days per week. As the season goes on we will also be looking at putting on a new apprentice – so we are starting to get some much needed cavalry and will be nice to run with a full crew again.

Our Kikuyu program will commence again at the beginning of July with our 1^st of 3 scheduled applications on our tee tops and their surrounds from the 6^th of July based on 21 day intervals. Our areas of focus are not only the tee tops but the also the chutes – area between tee and fairway. Course closures are not necessary for this as there is minimal risk of tracking chemicals onto greens. At this stage results look extremely positive on fairways after their Autumn applications – again we will monitor as the warmer weather returns as to what comes back. Remember it’s always a marathon and never a sprint when it comes to foreign grass eradication.

This time of year also brings out the best in the poa (wintergrass) in the greens, highlighting it all for the world to see! What makes it a difficult grass to control is it adapts to conditions at the moment when the greens are wet, compacted with little to no air movement meaning even in the sunnier days the top part of the profile remains wet and it just thrives. At this time of year we still apply growth regulators along with seed head suppressants to not allow for that seed head emergence which not only produces thousands of seeds it also creates bumpy putting surfaces. We can’t really spray to try and eradicate/reduce populations at this time of year as we don’t have growth rate from the bent to cover over and help supress the spread. This will result in bumpy and muddier greens for the entirety of winter. This year we have been able to push our coring dates from September deep into October this a lot more favourable for bent as generally the higher rates of nitrogen required for turf recovery and the cooler and wetter conditions that we have generally experienced is literally like fuel on a fire!

As we go deep into winter we do remind players to be mindful of where they are driving particularly in carts – We don’t like doing it but we have had to rope certain areas off so please be respectful and don’t drive over or pull down ropes.  If your ball or swing is impeded, you can take relief.

Until next time, stay warm and dry!

Dave Brennan

Course Superintendent.