November 2024

 Two and half weeks since the end of renovations and I could not be happier with the result and recovery of the greens and fairways.  Remarkably we are back at normal cutting heights, though the greens will be slower as the extra nutrients applied and desire for promoting root growth over the next 4 weeks before the stresses of summer hit, take priority.

 Through the renovation period despite some minor interruptions with showers (5mm) during the sanding process I am please to say all our pre renovation plans have been met and exceeded. 

With Connor at TAFE and Dean limited hours, my thanks to Ben and Jack for getting stuck in and working some long hours to complete our goals.

 Also many thanks to the volunteers organised by John for picking up the cores without of which would severely impact how much we could achieve. 

 Greens 

All greens were hallow cored 3 x 3 to 6 inch depth

Amendments applied 

Sanded 

Wetter and liq. Amendments applied prior to wash in. 

Greens were lightly verti cut pre reno.

 Greens were granular fertilised 1 week after.

 As always, I advise to allow 4 to 6 weeks for full recovery from renovation completion, but will likely be sooner than that.  I am very pleased with the clean result we have obtained despite initially being concerned with some inconsistency caused by the rain event during the sanding process.

Fairways 

Though we only planned to complete the Front 9 fairways for verti mowing, we managed to complete all fairways Front and Back ex par 3s.

All fairways were cut down to 5mm prior to verti mowing 

All Fairways verti mown to depth of -10mm 

Initial clean up with blower

Follow up reverse cut at 5mm 

Final clean off.

Fairways have had wetter applied along with pre-emergent crab grass and a light foliar N applied.

We also noted a high number of Black beetle larvae and took measures to control this turf pest before damage to turf results.

Follow up granular fertiliser has been applied 1 week after renovations

 Through the closure period and continuing to present we have also -

5/8 inch cored all green approaches, sanded. This is part of a long term strategy to improve drainage through winter in these heavy peat soil areas, the aim of which is dilute and modify the soil profile through large tine coring and sanding. The process will be repeated in March.

All Par 3 tees and men’s tees 2 4 6 11 fully renovated, scalped, verti cut, cored and sanded.

All other tees had their major renovations earlier this year and was not required to be repeated.

Selected greens surrounds and walkways also were solid cored.

 The past 3 weeks have been extremely busy specially as we have not been at full staff during this period, so my thanks again to the staff on hand for getting through a mountain of work, the rewards are watching the turf surfaces improve weekly.

 Looking ahead, we are not resting on our laurels, we have the 16^th bunker refurbishment upcoming in the next week. We look forward to improving this much maligned bunker entry.

Along with that, it will be approaching time to make follow up spray applications for all areas which is time consuming in itself, once complete I will be on leave for 2 to 3 weeks, leaving the operations in Bens capable hands.

 Till then

Happy Hooking