Course Update – Monday, 12 January 2025

The first full week of the year is done and dusted and it’s been a beautiful few weeks for growing grass. We’ve been fortunate with the weather the last month, narrowly avoiding some of the storms that have passed through the city and just receiving enough to keep topping up the creeks for adequate water storage. With the course going back to some form of normality this week, as we open holes 1 & 9 and get 18 holes back into play, we want to extend our gratitude to all members for their patience during the Greens Replacement Program.

The TifEagle Greens have been improving daily, and are performing quite well considering their infancy. With a couple of good months of growing weather remaining, we should see those thinner edges fill in before the cooler months, which will put us in a good spot for the back end of the year. All greens have been getting cut at 3.5mm for the past month, and they are all now included in the normal maintenance program, receiving a foliar, a roll, dusting every week and being edged regularly. Areas will continue to be plugged where needed and we are topping up areas with sand constantly to tie everything in as quick as possible.

You will notice some areas of the new Greens will appear to look blotchy, which is common as they get irrigated less during the day and localised dry spots can appear. The high drainage capability of the new Greens is always going to limit how much water they can retain during the day, so we’ll manage that by checking moistures regularly and irrigate when we can through play.

Atlas Golf are due to be back onsite on the 19^th to begin works to the new Putting Green and 1^st Tee complexes, which will see the rock wall of the current Putter be removed to allow more space for traffic, and serve as a great staging area for events in the future. The trees along the path to the 1^st Tee have been removed this morning to allow for these works to go ahead and will give members a great look at the new Green and 1^st Tee as they come out of the Golf Shop. Works will commence on 14, 15, 16 in the last week of January, which will then trigger the last change in course routing and the final stage of the GRP to commence.

On course the conditions have been great for golf and for growing. Tees and fairways continue to be mown at 10mm, and we are cutting our Green Surrounds at 7.5mm, there are still a couple of spots where new turf is still to grow in so they won’t look out of place and the new Tees on 2, 6, 7, 9, 11 and 13 are performing nicely. 13 Tee is presenting particularly well after being stolonised, but it won’t take too long for the other Tees that were turfed to look like they belong.

Bunkers have been getting some extra TLC in recent weeks following the rain activity. We still have plenty of work to do to replenish sand and correct poor drainage in a lot of them, which we will tackle as the year goes on. 16 fairway bunker will be reduced in size significantly when that hole is out of play.

Areas on the 3^rd and 10^th Hole where we added some mounding and turfed a new drainage line have been scalped down to get them back into playing condition, so they don’t look all that appealing currently. It won’t take long for the green tinge to reappear and they should be back to full health in no time. We are continuing to improve the course aesthetics and playability by removing select shrubs and grasses to allow more grass to cover landscape areas to make them easier to maintain and more player friendly. We will also look to keep lifting low lying canopies of trees to allow mowers to enter rough areas unimpeded.

We are also in the process of building a new walk bridge for the 7^th Green to 8^th Tee crossing, now that we’ve put a new rock swale in. We apologies for the inconvenience this will cause whilst it is out of action but ensure that it will be a welcome addition once complete.

All systems go for 2026, as we look to improve the course as in all areas, keep up the maintenance practices that have been working, tackle the poor drainage issues we are seeing around the course, and complete the GRP so that we can enjoy the course whole again.

Alex Blakey
Assistance Course Superintendent
The Brisbane Golf Club