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Course Update

Topic: Course News

Course Update 13 February 2018

Unfortunately, there is not much to report for you this week. The weather has had the final say in much of the planned work on the golf course. At the time of writing this we have recorded 200mm of rain for the first 13 days of this month. Considering that the historic average rainfall for the golf course in February is 71mm, one can see how so much rain can limit the works we had planned.

· Drainage

Turftech has tried valiantly to continue installing drainage but unfortunately ground conditions have become so bad that they have been forced to halt works until conditions improve. This has necessitated some unforeseen changes to the planned drainage works and we have tried to move to installing drainage in areas that will allow for works to continue. These changes have had to be made at very short notice and we appreciate your understanding with these changes to the course at short notice. Another challenge has been that there is currently a huge demand for sand. The redevelopment at Royal Auckland is using most of the available sand in Auckland and builders are also after the same sand. Added to that, the sand supplier’s production plant broke down and they had a huge backlog of orders to fulfil. Rest assured though, every effort is being made to do as much of this work as is possible and hopefully the weather will improve.
 
 New Drainage Washed out on Hole 1

· Cart Paths

The plan is to start with the installation of various cart paths on the front 9 over the coming Autumn months. We will time this with a period of dry weather so we are able to bring in heavy machinery.

· Bunkers

We have already commenced adding sand to the worst bunkers on the course and trying to improve the playability of the bunkers. While the Bunker matrix solution has been extremely successful on the bunkers that have been done with this solution, it is expensive and for now priority has been given to installing drainage on fairways and rough. In the interim we will be trying to ‘renovate’ the bunkers the way they are now by installing new sand and checking the drains. Once again, we will continue with this as soon as conditions allow.

· Weed Spraying

We have also been limited lately by wind and rain with how much spraying for weeds we can do. The boundary lines, under trees and naturalized areas need to be sprayed urgently and this is high on our list of priorities.