CAPEL GOLF COURSE MAINTENANCE

When you know it takes 27 hours to manually irrigate the back 9 from Tee to Green just once, and you need to do this at least twice in a week plus extra for Tees and Greens, When you know the weather forecast is for temperatures above 30 degrees for most of the week, you have a public holiday and three competition days to work around, the last thing you want to see on the first manual shift of the week is this .... Fortunately we were able to plug the leak temporarily keeping the irrigation running for the complete first cycle then made the permanent repair without too much disruption or delay to irrigation before the competition players came through. Just another week in the irrigation season. Between other must do maintenance works during the week we recommenced work on the 6 th tee, all going well we hope to have all the amendments added and levels complete this time next week.   During the peak season with our very small staff, extra mowing demands and

We are often called on to attend, "not your average greenkeeping duties" from stopping wayward Bulls, (yes Bulls not balls), roaming the course, to fishing Golf Carts out of Bunkers, (lucky we dont have water hazards),  so I didn't think I was being "Fleeced" during the week when I was informed we had a few unwanted visitors on 11 green.   Fair to say Ben and I have a new respect for farmers herding their stock after these Baaaad boys were a little reluctant to go where we wanted them to.... Just goes to shows The grass is always greener ................   One project we have been trying to complete between Course Maintenance tasks is the establishment of a Nursery green to use as a source of bent grass turf to repair greens during events like above or general repair and planed improvement works, once established we will no longer need to remove turf from our practice greens and will also allow us to implement measures to remove Couch and Saltene encroac

Always on a Friday or a long weekend and always when it is about to get hot !! Had to take time out from normal course set over the weekend to deal with a main line break on the back 9.  An 80mm section of pipe developed a 3 ft long crack, and as a lesson to the young padawans (apprentices) the crack was caused by the pipe becoming brittle as a result of excess glue used when joining many years ago that was left to pool in the pipe. In a case of less is best excess solvent cement left to pool in joints and pipes  will ultimately weaken the pvc walls leading to the above.   Happy Hooking and New Year to all