Hello Members and Guests.

We are now well into Summer, with the rapid growth rate of the turf on course we see a window of opportunity to try and tackle some unwanted weeds out on course. We have recently applied two applications of a herbicide to eradicate ‘Parramatta Grass’. The weed has responded well to the treatment killing it within a couple of weeks. With the treatment underway we must expect some discoloration of the grass. You can most definitely see some worn or weak areas in particular around some greens and fairways this is primarily due the application of the herbicide, However this grass will come back over a period of time, just a simple case short term pain for long term gain.

In the next couple of weeks we will aim to try and eradicate the ‘winter grass’ in the newer greens. We will only treat the newer greens as the older greens are primarily Winter grass and spraying that out will ultimately destroy the playing surface, again while we treat these greens please expect some deterioration of the playing surface for a period of time.

 Thank you for your time and happy golfing.

 Stephen Gaze. - Course Superintendent.

Yet another PGA tournament has passed. We got off to a relatively slow start to the event with the 1^st day being a total wash out. We received 30mm of rain through out the day causing significant wet spots through out the golf course. It was a big team effort and a sincere thank you goes to my staff of greenkeepers that put in some long hours to get the course presentable for the big event, the quality of work and professionalism through the event was second to none. I would also like to thank the volunteers that helped with morning set up each morning, again they did a quality job and without them the tournament would not have been as successful as it was.

During the tournament we have put the greens under great stress, we cut the greens at 2.5mm and rolled every afternoon to get the greens rolling at tournament pace. This regime is highly unsustainable especially coming to the warm months of the year where heat stress can cause huge problems. With warm temperatures and high humidity greens become highly susceptible to various diseases. We can change our cultural practices to limited damage from  these diseases. Our first step was to increase the cutting height from 2.5 mm to 3mm straight after the tournament. This will most definitely limit stress on our greens. Unfortunately because of this greens will run at a slower pace throughout the warmer months as opposed to the cooler months where the greens are under much less stress. It is important to take a much conservative approach to greens maintenance throughout the warm months to ensure healthy coverage to our greens all year round.

Thank you for your time and happy golfing.

Course Superintendent –

Stephen Gaze

Hello Members and Guests

With the NSW PGA Championship only a few weeks away we are now are looking to dress the course up to its best. However we just received 100mm of rain in the space of a few hours causing extreme flooding to the golf course. As a result of the unwelcomed rain we were forced to close the course on the Saturday of the club championships. This has put a bit of a dint in the tournament preparation with the extra clean up work that has to be taken place, I would like to send a big thank you to the volunteers that gave up there time to assist in the clean up, I would also like to thank those who volunteered with greens renovations, with out your help we never would have completed renovations in the time frame allocated.

Prior to the PGA we will be fertilising, trimming, increasing the cutting frequency to all surfaces and tuning up fine detail of the course to get the course up to tournament standard.

Thank you for your time and happy golfing.

Course Superintendent-Stephen Gaze

We welcome the arrival of Spring, already the temperature is starting to warm up and with the rise in temperature means the more growth you will see out on course. With the growing season underway we have  limited the amount of major work done on the course. We have completed irrigation in all fairways  but 3, 4 and 11, these holes will now be completed next year. It has been a grueling winter for our staff with the installation especially with the wet weather the cool season had to bring. The wet weather also set us back a couple of weeks which is why we have a few fairways yet to complete.

With the installation of the irrigation of the 1st fairway we saw a perfect opportunity to do some much needed work to the 1st fairway, we slightly raised the notoriously bare area with sand and turfed it with Kikuyu. By using sand, water should percolate more freely through the profile and get away instead of sitting on a clay soil which then quickly turnged hard and boggy which made growing conditions undesirable ( pictured below -coming shortly ).

With the major work done for the year we now look to prepare for the PGA Championship and club championships. In preparation we have scheduled to complete greens renovation on the 19th of September. This will consist of hollow tinning and topdressing the greens along with some amendments. During this time we will concentrate in maintaining the fine detail of the course, this will include mowing more frequently, trimming, bunker work, fertilising and the eradication of weeds. 

Thank you for your time and happy golfing.

Course Superintendent

Stephen Gaze