MEMBERS REPORT
As everyone is aware the rainfall over the past 5 months has been relentless with over 2metres of rain recorded. This has increased the water table to a point where it can’t take any more, we have bores located on course that are pushing water out due to the water table being so high.
The past 2 weeks has seen over 700mm recorded at the Club with the course been closed on numerous occasions, the increase in rainfall has meant that our normal preventative fungicide programs were interrupted with disease creeping in on some greens. But this shouldn’t disrupt the putting surfaces even with some minor scaring. Once the weather improves we will hopefully give the greens a very light dust heading in the Autumn/Winter to improve the putting surfaces.
We had planned to bring the new putting green back into play mid-March but with recent rain and humidity this has provided the favorable conditions for Pythium. We have sprayed 2 applications of fungicide and hopefully see some improvement in the next week, just if we can get some drier weather conditions. We will bring the green in hopefully early April with a lot more area for practicing without the ball rolling off the green.
We have a busy year ahead with our course masterplan identifying some tree removal for better playability and reducing shade issues on numerous holes. Our bunker program will also continue early August with the new bunkers completed last year being a huge success, even with all the rain we have had in the past 6 months these bunkers have remained playable in any rain event that mother nature has thrown at us. Bunkers to be completed this year will be 10/11/12/13(Rebuild the green November),14,15 and possibly 16, the club will invest around $120K in this year’s budget to complete these.
We are all hoping some better weather heading into winter otherwise it could be a long winter ahead, with already a saturated golf course.
Justin Sheehan
Course Superintendent
