Yesterday we cut and vibrate rolled greens to tidy them up, changed holes and set tee markers and raked all bunkers, next week it's a skeleton staff out checking the courses daily
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Crail golfing society

Course back on full greens after 4 days of hard frost, today we were catching up with cutting surrounds, cutting tees, divoting tees and finishing off a turfing job on hole 4 other jobs this week have been painting and cutting gorse back as the ground has been frozen

Progress has been slow with the 15th bunker with the frosts and play as its a blind shot to the green so we will wait till we close after Christmas as we have 2 courses from November till March we close the courses fortnightly to complete winter programs and rest them up but we have half the new face up and have re-routed the irrigation pipe work
This week is catching up with cutting fairways and semi-roughs plus with the other course closed we have staff over helping with winter programs so we are at skeleton staff

With the frosty mornings we have been carrying out jobs away from playing surfaces which have been draining down the irrigation system and the toilet block on the course, painting tee pots then when the frost has lifted we have made a start to cutting and collecting the deep roughs, extending the 15th medal tee and working at the 15th bunker rebuild
Hopefully with taking away the clippings from the roughs will help to starve these areas to produce a slightly thinner rough and reduce the rougher grasses

First frost

15th greenside bunker completed
Making a start to the other greenside bunker at 15th which we are extending the bunker left and back to double the size the reason for this is to help deter golfers playing from the 14th fairway to this green, once we have reshaped this area we will re-route the irrigation pipes round the rear of the bunker
Today was our first frost so greens were put on winter greens till 9am then filling in potholes in road other tasks after were to rake bunkers, move tee markers, spray greens with wetting agent and iron and work at the 15th bunker

All aeration work completed on greens and tees so today we cut greens and surrounds, sprayed greens with a fungicide, top-dressed greens and surrounds with sand then dragged the sand in, we are still working at rebuilding the 15th greenside bunker

Solid tining greens to a depth of 3"

Slit tining greens and tees and we have made a start to rebuilding the 15th greenside bunker

A bit colder today more like November, we set up the course for our winter medal tomorrow which was cut and turf iron greens, change holes, wash and replace white inserts in cups, rake bunkers and move tee markers then after was collect balls and set up corer for solid tining greens next week. Yesterday was completing 16th bunker, verti-draining tees, cutting and divoting tees then starting the verti-draining on walkways which will continue next week

Verti-draining with a 5/8" solid tine to a depth of 6" on the tees

The 2nd greenside bunker at the 16th getting rebuilt
We have completed our drainage at hole 7 yesterday, so we are now starting our aeration program which will continue into next week, with the mild weather still here we have cut greens Monday and today other jobs on the go are rebuilding the 16th bunker, top-dressing all the drainage lines and cutting surrounds and winter greens

Greens were cut then sprayed with an insecticide plus half-rate of iron
With carrying out drainage for the last few weeks we really needed to catch up with cutting so we cut fairways, semi-roughs and cut bunker faces this week
Irrigation pipes that I caught with trencher at 9th
A little pebble

Drainage started down at hole 7
Bunker at 16th green rebuilt and the face height has been raised to help reduce balls rolling in off the green

More drainage this week at the 9th surround and hopefully then down to the 7th surround other jobs are rebuilding the first green side bunker at the 16th on the left side. All the new drainage got well tested on Friday night with 11mm of rain

We manage to get back to the drainage project on hole 4 but only for a day as it became to wet and messy so we moved to another part of the course to drain the 16th surround, with carrying out drainage and bunker rebuilding in the last few weeks we have left cutting to a minimum so today we caught up with cutting of the tees, surrounds, winter greens, greens, strimming work and changing holes and also completed the rebuilding of the 7th greenside bunker

Bunkers at the 3rd completed and top-dressed etc

Skeleton staff today as they were away to the Scotsturf show, so I was over working on the Balcomie course first thing changing holes for the medal which gave our greens time to dry out before we carried out top-dressing and brushing in

Rebuilding the 3rd green side bunkers on the right, the drainage project is at a stand still as the area is to wet to work at after the rain at the weekend

Greens were cut and sprayed with liquid iron and wetting agent

Today we cut tees, divoted tees, cut greens and worked on the 4th fairway drainage
The drainage lines were all rolled, top-dressed then brushed in

2nd green side bunker
3rd green side bunker

Today it was high winds but dry. We had to stop the drainage project today as we had a break down on one of the tractors so plan b was to start rebuilding bunkers on holes 2 & 3 instead so hopefully we are back to drainage tomorrow but forecast is looking very wet & windy which will test our drainage so far that we have completed fingers crossed lol, other jobs were to check course first thing, collect balls, mark out more lateral drainage lines and lower and re-turf a mains water valve cover at hole 11

The drainage boys

First cut and roll on the greens since they were top-dressed
Bunker at 1st green finished and top-dressed

This week sees the start of our drainage project on the 4th fairway and the re vetting of the 1st green side bunker. yesterday afternoon seen 19mm of rain fall not the best for trenching


top-dressed drainage lines
Last Friday I visited a local club to check out there fairway spiker as we are looking at replacing our existing spiker