Courses still closed

3rd hole Craighead course, as you can see all the snow has melted which has caused a lot of flooding, the frost is still in ground so the water has no where to go

5th hole Craighead course

6th fairway bunkers Craighead course

1st green Balcomie course

Courses closed

As you can see not much happening here, this week the proposed work has been postponed until better weather, so it's been painting ball washers, cleaning sheds and filling in pot holes in road.

16th fairway bunkers

14th hole

9th hole

10th hole

I'm on frost duty this weekend and as you can see we have snow lying on all the greens and the ground has a frost in a depth of 1/2" so i have closed the Balcomie course and the Craighead course is on winter greens back 9 only as front 9 is still to wet and the puddles have frozen over, which may be dangerous for the golfers that will brave the elements today

Today jobs have had to be cancelled because of the weather, we have a little snow lying on the surface and a slight crust to the surface so we cleaned up mess room etc, went out moved tee markers and raked bunkers, checked OB posts, divoted tees and finished off a turfing job, the jobs that were cancelled were hand cutting greens and cutting aprons.

This week we have been trying to keep off the wet areas so we have been edging,cleaning up and whin dusting tee paths and the main path that runs through the course that we use with our vehicles. Other jobs have been to continue to raise sprinkler heads on greens 10, 11, 12 & 13 cut and roll greens for the mid week medal, rake bunkers and move tee markers daily etc

We have to areas at each side of path that need to be dug out and replaced with sandy soil then turf

That's tee paths 1,7,9,10,11,13,14 & 16 complete hopefully we will finish off path at 18 before Christmas break

Today white frost so no work on course carried out this morning apart from putting pins on winter greens and filling in pot holes in road to the greenkeepers shed. At 10.30am the frost lifted so we put pins back on greens, raked bunkers and moved tee markers.

The 3rd winter green, this hole is a 6" hole which has a cover on it when not in use, as you can see the bottom of the cup is still muddy from the wet weather some of the other winter holes have water lying in them which we have had to pump out for play.

3rd green Craighead course

Today we were still short staffed but managed to finish off the 16th tee path, check course and move tee markers, cut aprons and cut the back 9 fairways and fairways 3 & 6 but the rest are still to soft and wet for mower.

Once the whin dust was spread out over path, we raked it out then tramped it in then another rake this firms up the surface ready for golfers to walk on.

Jobs on Tuesday were checking the course then cutting tees, spraying tees with liquid iron, changing holes and spraying fairways 2,3,5,6,7 & 8 with soluble iron i was not sure if we would manage these jobs as we have to 2 members of staff off ill and another on holiday so i was pleased that we did manage.

Jobs on Wednesday were to cut & roll greens, rake all bunkers & move tee markers today we have a winter medal on so after course was set up we stayed out the way of play by starting to edge the 13th & 16th tee paths and hopefully tomorrow these 2 paths will be top up and raked level with a material called whin dust.

Another wet day

We have had an area of wall on the out of bounds at the 14th hole collapse at the weekend with the heavy rain. today we closed the front 9 as it so wet, so jobs today were to roll greens, move tee markers, rake bunkers only on back 9 and raise sprinklers on green 10 then in shed painting tee benches as weather got worse.

damage on the 3rd green this morning, looks like a pony or horse has done this. Jobs today were handing cutting greens, trimming holes, moving tee markers, raking bunkers, spraying greens with liquid iron, collecting balls off the driving range and cleaning mess room etc

We have had to abandoned the plans for today as the course is to wet the jobs that i had planned were to slit tine tees, cut tees and spray liquid iron on tees, so we finished off the 1st bunker and 9th tee and we then carried on with raising sprinkler heads on greens

That's the 9th tee complete and will be G.U.R till beginning of next season, we also applied a (4.0.10+10fe) to help the new turf, once the turf starts knitting in we will then carry out light top-dressings

The turf nursery, this is where we get all our turf from, we have set the turf cutter to a shallower depth as we are going to turf 9th tee, but if we are using turf for rebuilding bunkers we set it deeper.

Hopefully by the end of the day the tee will be all turfed

bunker at 1st green halfway through rebuilding and the rear of the bunker has been lowered.

I have sprayed greens 7, 14 & 16 with a new liquid iron as a trail, hopefully see the results in the next couple of days

Our jobs this week so far was to get the 9th tee raked and levelled ready for turfing, reposition the sprinkler to rear edge of tee and back fill this has been completed so hopefully we can get a base fertiliser on then start turfing tomorrow weather pending

This is another job we have started this week, the greenside bunker on the 1st has been damaged by golfers walking in and out of bunker so my plan is to lower the entrance to the bunker by 12" to make it easier for the golfers so hopefully this will stop the damage occurring again and we will rebuild the full face while we are working here. with the frost this morning we went to winter greens all day.

Today's jobs were to hand cut greens, cut aprons, cut winter greens, change holes, move tee markers, divot tees, rake all bunkers then work on 9th tee. On the tee we broke up the surface with our harrow/levelling bar this will allow us to move material from the high areas to the low areas and also we dug the trench for moving the sprinkler head

13th green

18th green

17th green

At last a day with no rain

Both bunkers at 17th are finished and are G.U.R till start of next season

Next winter project is to level the 9th yellow tee and re-position the sprinkler head

First job was to stripe off the old turf and then take heights of existing tee then set our new height that we require

The sprinkler head will be re-positioned 3metres back to the rear edge of tee which will allow us to reduce the turn of the head to 180 degrees which should save us water, plus the sprinkler head is off the playing surface which won't interfere with aeration work etc