Course Update – Wednesday, 5 February 2025
Course Update – Wednesday, 5 February 2025
The last few weeks have seen Atlas Golf make quick work of the resurfacing on Greens 19, 20 & 21. The whole process took 11 working days to remove existing turf, shell out 200mm of the Green profile, shape the base back to surveyed levels before adding new profile that contains a blend of amendments to support our new TifEagle Greens, re-shape the contours of the Greens with a bunker bike and drag in the sand with an astroturf mat to get a smooth finish before we laid a solid turf perimeter and stolonised the Greens.
It’s been a week and a half since the Green on 19 was planted with stolons, and we are seeing great results so far with root uptake and a green tinge over the Green. If we keep receiving generous weather, we should see the Greens start to take shape within the next 4-5 weeks.
We will be covering the 20th Green with a Growth Mat to experiment the different growth rates and how it performs compared to the exposed Greens which will give us the ability to make informed decisions moving forward.
On course, we have been really happy with the performance of the Greens over the peak growing period. We are staying on top of our clipping yield, and aren’t seeing a great deal of thatch accumulation leading to puffy surfaces and chattering that we were seeing last summer. The Greens are regularly rolling at 10ft on the Stimp, and up to 10.5ft after a Cut and Roll.
The dusting program is back in action after the top-dresser had a holiday, which we will continue to do weekly until temperatures drop and we will start to back it off when growth declines. We will look to hand top-dress weaker areas, and apply some granular fertilisers on these to ensure optimum coverage heading into the cooler months.
Tees and Fairways are still being cut at 10mm, and are showing great colour, even when we aren’t getting the consistent rain, which is pleasing. Weeds are quite persistent on the Tees, and we will look to target these in the coming weeks. Foreign grasses are being spot treated on certain Fairways and Tees, which may result in some discolouration whilst the Couch grows back over.
Bunkers are all currently in play, and we are beginning to target the exposed matting in a lot of them. Due to the consistent washing out of bunkers in the wet seasons, the Bunker Bike that allows us to push sand up can expose the matting in them. Atlas Golf are also going to be re-doing the back bunker on 20 with a product called DuraCrumb, which is similar to the rubber that gets used on playgrounds. They have shelled the bunker out, exposed the drainage to find the reason it wasn’t draining was a build-up of silt in the bunker lining, not allowing water to penetrate it and get out into the drainage itself. This silt build up is contributed to constant wash outs, and recent flooding events. The benefit of the new DuraCrumb product is that it’s a more porous material then the bunker lining, which in turn should allow excess water to move through to the drainage lines and out of the bunker more quickly.
Landscape areas are consistently being sprayed to try and eliminate as many weeds as possible, and we are currently going through the course lifting tree branches that are low lying to be able to pass mowers around them more safely, and present the course better.
We are continually applying herbicide treatments to the rough areas, which is giving us a great visual appearance as the rough yellows off and the Fairways and Greens pop with great colour.
There are a few areas on course that are GUR zones at this point in time, (marked with white dotted lines) as we grow in some new turf, and allow areas to grow back in from damage from heavy machinery. The patch on the LHS of 9 Fairway in the rough was actually a mainline leak, from the old irrigation system. It appears that the tree roots that ran either side of the mainline were pushing the pipe until the join couldn’t take it anymore.
Finally, the RHS of the 3rd Fairway, up on the hill, is becoming the new location for a TifEagle Nursery that we are building in-house. Having the sand stockpiled from the 19th, 20th, and 21st Greens we thought it would be wise to get a Nursery going so we could do patch work on those greens if they needed it as they grow in.
