June 2024

 My apologies for the June update coming a couple of weeks late,  been a little busy.......

 The tail of two months

 The last few months I have covered water issues or the lack there of, celebrated the arrival of rain last month and now, for the first 21 days of June have been repairing water damaged caused by two extreme rain events spaced 5 days apart.

 By no means complaining about the drop, we needed it badly and a whole more, but if someone can arrange for it to fall steadily over a number of days rather than a couple of hours,  we’d be eternally grateful  !!

 Saturday night 1^st June, prior to the 2^nd round of the Capel Cup,  100mm fell in 2 hours,  the extreme amount of rain in a very short window caused significant water damage through the course and made life interesting Sunday morning before the 2^nd round commenced, attempting to get surfaces back into a playable condition.

Every single bunker had severe washouts, and for the very first time I have experienced here at Capel, a large amount of silt and organic matter up to 4 inches thick in places washed into fairways throughout the course, requiring ploughing and removal.

 

 

The staff arrived a little earlier than our planned start time to get through a mountain of work, we were thankful the event was a shotgun start a little later in the morning than would otherwise be the case, we did manage to get all bunkers into play, however the shear amount and spread of silt through the course meant local rules had to be put in place for relief. My thanks to Ron Crabb, Match Director and GM Leon, for the support and understanding of what we were faced with.

No sooner had we finished the course clean up over 4 days, another extreme rain event dumped 45mm in little over an hour, and whilst the damage this time wasn’t to the same extent, fresh sand on bunker faces washed out on most bunkers and more organic matter washed into fairways.  The kicker was this occurred the night before the Ladies Invitation on Friday, so made for another pesky morning to prep the course for the event.

So far a total of 180 labour hours have been dedicated purely to the aftermath of these 2 rain events with ongoing remedial work to be attended over the course of the next few months.

Looking ahead, Bunkers may still be at higher risk of plug lies on faces, further consolidation work is ongoing for replaced sand. They will also be at higher risk of repeated washouts with less volume of rain events as sand will remain loose requiring time to settle despite measures to firm.

Contaminated silt washed into some bunkers will need removal and replenished with fresh clean sand, this work will be attended once other turf repair works are complete and will also mean the Bunker renovations plans I mentioned previously to targeted bunkers will be postponed till later in the year.

 All the silt on course has been removed, there may be an increase incidence of disease which will be monitored. However large areas seeded during Autumn in preparation for winter coverage have been washout out, along with small eroded areas within fairways and even divot repair spots with sand wash out, all these areas will likely take a long time to recover, as the combined effect of the colder non growing period through winter of warm season turf and the leaching of nutrients combine to halt any real recovery growth.  We are presently re-seeding areas and patching other turf areas but recovery will be slow with to germinate and may not fully provide adequate cover in a sufficient time.

It is for these reasons Course and Match committees  considered and implemented the introduction of Winter Rules of 15cm prefer Lies, in order to give players a fair surface to play off,  attempt to minimise further damage to the course through winter play and allow course staff to repair areas without having to worry too much about GUR.

 W e appreciate Member understanding through this unusual extreme weather events and thank the members for their continued support thus far.

 At the end of the day, we will get back to normal, turf will recover and the with the result of some hard work will provide for the continued high expected standard of presentation we are known for. Many in the community have felt far greater impacts specially those effected by 2 tornados that ripped through Bunbury, our main thoughts and concerns are with those people who have lost far greater than a bit of sand off bunkers,  staff have also been involved in helping the community, their neighbours where they were able. What a great bunch of staff to work with !!! and certainly grounds you, putting things into perspective !

 Till Next time

Happy Hooking

Stay safe