Course Update – Tuesday, 23 September 2025
The last few weeks have been a busy period, with our contractors Atlas Golf beginning Stage 3 of our Greens Replacement Program (GRP), the maintenance team have been hard at work to get Greens 11, 12 & 13 ready for play. The weather leading up to opening of the new holes, wasn’t as warm as we had hoped, which meant the Greens weren’t quite as settled as we would have liked them to be. Always at the mercy of mother nature, grass growth habits are never as favourable in the winter as they are in Spring & Summer. Alas, with overnight temperatures starting to rise, the growth on those TifEagle Greens have rapidly increased, and now with the decision to move the next stage of the GRP to Greens 3, 5 & 6 means we can give them another few weeks to grow in and spread. They are going to be lean, as 19, 20 & 21 were, but the decision to put these greens in play when we did was to ensure Atlas Golf could continue pushing on with the remaining greens, which will give us the best chance to get the entire GRP complete this summer, and not have to extend into the next growing season creating further delays and course closures.
Interesting to note the following soil temperatures for the last month compared to what is optimal for growing TifEagle Stolons and Turf.
Average: 18.5
| Shoot Growth | Root Growth | ||
| Minimum | Optimum | Minimum | Optimum |
| 12.65° C | 27° – 34.6° C | 9.9° – 15.4° C | 23.6° – 29.1° C |
This indicates that the soil temperatures have been well below optimum for much of the last 16 weeks, hence the undesirable growth habits from 11, 12 & 13. We were down 2.6° C (from 18.8° C to 16.2° C) in average temperature for the month of August compared to 24’, which works out to the same in soil temperature. Whilst it might not seem much, the difference is huge for greens establishment. Another important thing to note was the average minimum was down 2° C, which is why you would have seen the maintenance crew rugged up for most of the month!
The rest of the greens have held the course in good stead, continuing with a smooth ball roll, and consistent speeds of upwards of 10 ½ feet on the stimp. You would have noticed that some areas are starting to dry out slightly, as an attempt to spare water on the greens that are going to be replaced, and ensure we have plenty of water for the new greens to grow in. Which is interesting to note that albeit receiving over 1100mm of rain this year, it’s only taken 3-4 weeks for the course to dry out in certain areas. It certainly didn’t take long for us down in maintenance to be hoping for a 10mm shower once a week!
Fairways and Tees have noticeably jumped in the last few weeks now that warmer days are about, and we are seeing those areas that struggled over winter start to recover. Whilst we were able to keep good coverage and colour over the winter months, we noticed a lot of divots in the hot spots on course that struggled to fill in. This won’t take long now that growth habits will increase and those wintergreen Tees and Fairways will grow rapidly. Which leads us in to the battle to keep growth rates consistent; by applying our growth regulators at the right times to ensure we don’t have the ups and downs of growth that lead to thatch and maintenance problems.
Bunkers have been importantly easier to maintain with less rainfall, and the bunkers that we fixed on 11, 12 & 13 are settling in nicely. You’ll notice that the sand is starting to become dry quite quickly, so they appear “fluffier”. We don’t have the luxury of being able to keep the bunkers at a perfect moisture content, so they’ll get irrigated when the Greens and Fairways get their regular irrigation. We have looked at the bunkers that will require attention going into the next stage of the GRP, which we hope to rectify, just like we have on 11, 12 & 13.
It’s getting to that time of year again where we will start to heavily invest some time into spraying herbicide into the landscape areas, to keep on top of the weed growth. We have already started to target the fairways & rough on holes 2, 7, & 8 and will look to continue this on holes as they come out of play to tidy up the rough as much as possible and promote the Wintergreen Couch to spread. The herbicide applications put out last summer in the rough made a noticeable difference to the undesirable weed growth and is something that will continue to be added into the maintenance program.
We are gearing up for a busy few months of summer with the GRP in full effect from the 24th of September, and we want to thank everyone for their patience whilst we enter this new phase at BGC. We will continue to do our best to keep the Greens that are in play for the 9-hole routing as consistent as possible, whilst nursing them through a considerable amount of extra golf. We ask members to continue to be respectful by filling divots on Tees, and repairing pitch-marks on Greens. If you can’t find yours, try to fix someone else’s!
Stay excellent!
Alex Blakey
Assistant Course Superintendent
The Brisbane Golf Club
