With some big events on last month the feedback has been very humbling. The Hahn Darwin Open was a great few days and course presented well with slick greens and nice colour through tee to green. Now the focus, apart from general club golf enjoyment, is tournament prep for the NT classic on Thursday 24 August which requires us each day to have greens cut and rolled, bunkers raked, pins cut ,tee marker shifts, and tees collars cut daily. In prep for this event and the Firies event last week we verticut greens last Wednesday 9 August. This takes out the thatch and grain and we will again go out with a liquid root stimulant fertiliser with iron magnesium mix chlorophyl is the key for colour, low rates of primo a growth retardant, for some consistent ball speeds. A stimp meter is used to measure green speeds and although for tournaments we tend to pace them up a little a reading of 11 is ok. I like to have them at 10 week in week out, a constant speed is what we strive for taking in to consideration wind speed forecasts, soil moisture etc .with most of our greens domed pin placements are important as well.
Along with general course maintenance my focus will be to eradicate the narrow leafed carpet grasses in the fairways. The herbicide I've finally found does discolour the QLD bluegrass a little, although bounces back very quickly but will wait until the Classic is done. The trees planted on course have taken well although a couple now seem to look a little stressed so I have got our 1000 lt spray unit into action and Michelle has poured many litres onto these and we will mulch around them asap.
Some new equipment is arriving on the drip feed we now have a new greens mower ,bunker rake, mdx workman runabout , spray unit, roller, out front contour cutting deck and toughcut deck, these fit to a power train called a ventrac with major cutting units still to come so our breakdown times will be minimal.
Happy golfing!
Damon Quigley Course Superintendent DGC
