Course Renovations are now behind us with both greens renovations and fairway renovations going perfectly to plan. The greens are just about fully recovered and the fairways aren’t far behind. With the showers we’ve had over recent days, the course is in a really healthy spot leading into summer. We will be looking to push the greens over the next 2 months with Club Championships and the Mona Vale Medal in the near future. Once the weather starts to warm up we will implement protection measures for the greens as we see fit.
Future works planned for the spring season this year will be focused on irrigation extensions, completing the concrete path program started 7-8 years ago, prepping for the Club Championships and tee and collar renovations. We will also be reshaping the 14th tees, converting selective couch areas into kikuyu and re-turfing worn areas. We are planning to rebuild the 12th green in February.
We are taking advantage of the cooler weather at the moment to extend on our current irrigation system. We have identified a few areas of the course that currently aren’t covered by our irrigation system, and will manage these works in house to improve our current irrigation coverage. The areas of focus are the 17th, 9th, 8th and 2nd greens surrounds, as well as the 5th and 9th runways, with plans for other areas to be done in future.
The annual tee renovations will occur on the tees following the Mona Vale Medal in mid-November. These will be the same practices that we do on the fairways with the areas scarified, scalped down to remove as much thatch as possible and produce a firm, even surface. The tees and collars will then be cored. With the sandy tees the cores will be rubbed back into the surface as top dressing, whereas on some of the heavier soil tees like the 9th and 13th the cores will be picked up and core holes filled with sand like a greens renovation. Coring these areas will improve root growth and health, as well as water and air flow into the soil, which will help to produce better playing surfaces. During tee renovations we also plan to reshape the 14th tee. The current tee is very uneven and we don’t feel the space is currently being used effectively. We will be adding 100m overall to the current site to increase the playable surface.
We will re-turf all path ends as the weather warms up, using the couch off the 12th fairway which is already healthy and established giving it a better chance of survival in those high traffic areas. Where the turf is removed from the 12th fairways we will replace it with kikuyu in the view to convert that fairway over to match the rest of the golf course. We will begin to re-turf all the worn areas on the collars this week and will do the kikuyu surrounds leading into summer.
At this stage the 12th green is scheduled to be rebuilt in February. The hole will be out of play for around 10 weeks while construction is completed and the turf has had time to properly establish. During this period 11a will be in play. The designs for the new green can be viewed in the Club House.
The greens team has seen a major changeover in staff this season losing both assistant superintendents; one to landscaping and one to travel South America for the next 12-18 months. This has given us the opportunity to restructure our team. There will now only be one assistant in Lee Moore from Shelly Beach GC, and a 3IC in Charlie Jormanainen from Cromer GC who is currently in the running to win Apprentice of the Year in NSW. We also have 5 new staff members joining the team this summer from various golf clubs in Sydney and overseas. The team is now starting to settle in and we are looking forward to a successful season ahead.
Sam Neylon
Course Superintendent
