Course Update – September

Spring looks like it may have sprung with some welcomed sunshine beginning to grace the golf course once again. Soil temperatures are starting to increase which in return brings growth and aids winter recovery.

The past month has seen us operating on a skeleton crew of 2-3 guys with apprentices attending TAFE and other staff members taking some much-needed annual leave before the onset of the warmer weather.

Poa cure applications have continued with one more scheduled application to take place, results look promising with greens like the 1^st  for example showing excellent signs of the chemical doing its thing. Interseeding these areas with bent grass has occurred with good germination starting to appear within the scarred areas. Next year we will look to increase the number of greens that will be treated.

Our kikuyu program also has 1 application remaining out of the 3 in total. A few areas within the rough are looking a little worse for wear but a lot of these areas have been treated for the first time so it is expected these areas are to thin out until we start getting more couch to cover over – Remember when fairways like 11 and 14 had massive bare areas in them when we first started the program back in 2022? As is the case in all long term programs it’s a slow grind but we are seeing a massive reduction in kikuyu within the fairways and we will start to see a further reduction within our roughs as the program continues – as full eradication will take many years our plan was to remove it out of fairways and slowly work out to the tree lines and then into our non passive areas of turf.  

With the temperatures now increasing we have recently planted our new turf nurseries with Santa Ana and Wintergreen couch. Having these nurseries onsite will allow us to pull grass off them for any repairs and construction work. In the past we haven’t had anywhere suitable to pull large amounts of grass from, so we needed to order it in at an added expense to the club.  Alongside the nursery we have an area set up for some test plots using warm season greens grade grasses, zoysia, paspalum (saltene) and a tiff variety will be planted and will be interesting to see how these grasses perform in the southwest region.

Another project about to commence will be re grassing of the driving range, the 1^st of three phases will commence towards the latter part of September. This will include spraying out the existing grasses, rotary hoeing the existing profile with added amendments and replanting. In phase 1 the first 100m has been sprayed and is scheduled to be replanted on the 30^th September. Once this area has grown in we will look to do the next 80m in December with the 3^rd and final phase scheduled for February.  Overall this project will give us better turf quality, lift the visual appeal and for smoother operations when collecting range balls.

It’s definitely an exciting, yet busy time of year for us and before you know it, we will be into our major greens renovations. This year full course closures will be in place for Monday 14^th and Tuesday 15^th October, along with coring of greens fairways will also be done during this time. However, I’ll save that for the next instalment…