'What a Week' Over the past 7 days the golf course has received a massive 195mm of rain making the course unplayable and equally important, not being able to be properly maintained in any way. The ground is saturated and extremely soft, just walking anywhere leaves muddy footprints. You could just imagine what 250 golfers in one day would do to the course.
Fortunately, at the moment we have been able to still cut the greens, tees and green surrounds but that's it. Moving forward, fairway mowing and cutting the roughs will not be possible for at least 7-10 days because the ground is just too soft and wet. The roughs in particular will become extremely long.
Looking at the forecast about 10 days ago, I decided to apply a heavier than normal growth retardant application on the fairways and tees in the hope that if this wet spell was longer than predicted, the growth will be minimised and look what has taken place. Eventually when fairway mowing resumes the surface should return to normal quickly.
So now it's a waiting game, hoping for the rain to stop and allow the ground to dry out sufficiently for mowing to re commence and get everything back into shape. We will not rush this process as going out too early will cause damage which will take a longer time to recover. Myself and all members just have to be patient. Once the sun comes back out (and it will), there will be important recovery time prior to recommencing play.
While we have received considerable downpours here, on a larger scale we sympathise with the devastation and in some cases tragedy for all the affected people in flooded areas where the rainfall exceeded 700mm last week, rainfall for us February 1st - March 3rd was 442mm (almost half a metre).
If you are feeling you'll never get back to golf, having been off the course for just over a week, back in 1989 April through to June, the course was closed following the impact of wet weather for a staggering 59 days due to being unplayable!
Ron Duffy - Course Superintendent
.png)
