CAPEL GOLF COURSE MAINTENANCE

The last thing we wanted to see with a 5.30am start tomorrow for the Capel 3000........ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology Western Australia Severe Weather Warning for damaging winds for people in the South West, South Coastal and Great Southern forecast districts. Issued at 2:48 pm WST on Friday 26 September 2014. For people in parts of WA southwest of a line from Bunbury to Katanning to Bremer Bay. This includes people in, near or between the following towns: Bunbury, Busselton, Margaret River, Bridgetown, Katanning and Albany. Weather Situation The passage of a cold front during Saturday morning may cause DAMAGING WINDS to 100 kilometres per hour that could result in DAMAGE TO HOMES AND PROPERTY. DAMAGING WINDS are likely to develop about the Southwest Capes after 2am Saturday morning and extend to Bunbury and Bremer Bay by about 5am . Conditions will ...

The 10th tee complex construction stage is nearing completion, the path extension and filling of the ladies tee is all that is left for Jetline to complete. A huge thank you to Russell Lines and the boys from Jetline for all the sensational work they have done. The staff will be busy over the next week or so, extending irrigation lines, levelling the new tee areas to blend into the existing tee levels, cutting and laying turf between other course work primarily preparations for the Capel 3000 this weekend.  Our plan is to complete the Men's Main Tee Box and have the Ladies Tee backfilled to wall height to allow play from both tees for this weekend.  Next week we will complete the new section of the Ladies Tee Box and the following week the Mens White tee box. Green Renovations are only a little over a week away hopefully we have fine weather over the next few weeks to help us complete all these important works.  ...

The green staff put up a $1000 hole in one prize and a $500 Birdie for a short time on the 3rd hole this week.  No one claimed the prize maybe due to the tree obstructing the hole ! Once we cleared the tree that came down in the latest front to pass through our cash went back in our pockets. Thankfully no major damage to the putting surface with only a few pitch marks, nothing were are not use to repairing. Now that I have your attention, Greens renovations are fast approaching and this year d ue to the National Vets in November , (only 4 weeks from our schedules renovations), our normal Greens Renovations will be split into two “mini” less vigorous Renovations in order to have the greens back in play and to speed for this event whilst still gaining the important health benefits from aeration and sanding. Our October renovations normally consist of using 12 to 14mm solid or hallow tines and usually takes up to 4 to 6 weeks for full recovery and not to ...

Pretty quiet on course over the last week with only run of the mill news and nothing of any real significance to report. Looking ahead the same can be said. We are concentrating our efforts on removing fallen Branches,  highlighting tree roots and low branches in the Bush prior to the first Bush cut of the season a process we go through for the safety of the operators and protect the equipment. Bush mowing has commenced and normally takes 2 weeks to complete. We are also spraying Glyphosate around fixtures and areas we cant manoeuvre the out front mower.  We will be running at 75% staff levels over the next 3 weeks with leave and TAFE absence, so when I say its quiet on course I guess it isn't really we are still being kept extremely busy! The green staff sponsor day is this coming Thursday, get your pitch repairers ready, your divot repair technique polished but most of all we hope all enjoy the competition sponsored by the greens...

The recent weather has been nothing short of spectacular, the golfing gods providing perfect conditions for the ladies championships and all our other events, so many consecutive days of blue sunny skies we were forced to irrigate some greens during the week, a rare occasion during the winter months. With the ladies championships played on Monday and Wednesday for the 2 weeks it has been pretty quiet on course as far as our major winter works goes, some increased grooming practices to have the course in condition as would be expected for the championships our priority. Once the championships were underway we focused on off "course work" so not to disrupt play, machine maintenance was one key area, but the main focus was on removing dead trees near our sand pit for safety reasons during times when operating equipment in the area, another task was cleaning around the 12th tee during breaks in play. With the championships over on Wednesday we resumed our winte...

After a delayed start to our planed winter projects we have managed to complete a couple of the big time consuming tasks this week. We installed the first stage drain line for the 11th surrounds, with a capture pit at the front of the green, we will be using a  hired trencher for the deeper work to extend the drain line away from play at a later time when we can put the trencher to a full days work in other areas as well to make full use of the available hire time. As the front of the green is much lower than the surrounding area we need to dig the trench a lot deeper to achieve the minimum 1:100 fall required for effective draining.. The one project I was pleased to mark off was the 18 fairway irrigation lines, with the flow rate severely reduced through these pipes it was one of the more urgent projects to attend before the irrigation season. A time consuming task as we first had to locate pipes, (no mean feat with plans not entirely accurate), locate the ...

This week we managed to make a start on our winter works to do list, after losing just the one day to course clean up from the latest front and also the WA golf Junior event held on Wednesday. Remedial drainage work to the approach on 15 green and side of 14 green was completed this week, the front of 15 green has been consistently wet through winter over the years and also at times during the irrigation season, causing poor quality turf in the area. During the week we installed a mini herringbone drain pattern with 80mm slotted Ag pipe and a natural soak well to alleviate the problem. Herringbone Drain line After digging  and discovering a 2 inch layer of Blue metal dust (road base) creating an impervious layer that prevents water draining freely under the whole area, and an heavily iron oxidised (irrigation water) upper soil profile from slow drainage, I am less confident the drain line in itself will be ...