This week we have been mini-coring/cleaning up/double verti-cutting/cutting and top-dressing the Craighead course greens

 14th green completed with very little disturbance to the playing surfaces

 Also we have slit tined all the Craighead course fairways again, other tasks has been cleaning up drainage works, re planting trees that were moved for the drainage works. On the Balcomie course tasks have been to carry out course set up ie roll greens or dewy brush, rake bunkers daily and divot tees

Both David's and I took part in Movember to help raise money and thankfully it was not too windy to blow any off

Balcomie course- closed today due to a hard frost so jobs were to drain down the irrigation systems for the winter and divot fairways
Craighead course - open on winter greens, jobs were to top- up drainage lines with sand before machine goes off site tomorrow, drain down toilet block and reshaping the rear of the 17th bunker with the spoil going to the 18th tee extension on the Balcomie course

This week the drainage contractors have finally managed to break through all the rock and finish the drainage project so now they are onto the last part of the project and that is to extend and raise the existing mound by the 6th tees, the reason for this is to help reduce the noise level from the local Kart club. With the Balcomie course on it's winter closure this week we have been out slit tining fairways, rebuilding the 11th fairway bunker, reducing a mound on the 17th fairway to make it easier to cut and improve play and top-dressing greens and surrounds.

today we carried out deep hollow coring to a depth of 6" to our putting green the reason for this is to reduce the heavy soil profile and in time make the profile more of a sandy loam to help reduce compaction, flooding, encourage deeper rooting and a more similar putting surface like the greens on the Balcomie course.

Drainage works were going really well till we hit rock which has slowed the digging down so we have hired a rock picker attachment for the digger to break through to get the correct levels for the drain line, the drain track across fairway 3 and semi-rough at hole 4 has been back filled, tramped, rolled and re-turfed. With concentrating on drainage the 17th bunker has taken second priority but is nearing completion now.Other tasks have been to divot the fairways on the Craighead course and replace any of the D valves in our greens sprinkler heads which allow us to manually operate the heads

 Back filling main drain across the 3rd fairway

Digging main drain along by the 6th tees

Drainage works are still on going, the 17th bunker face is completed it's just all the surrounding areas to be completed and we have slit tined greens, surrounds and fairways on the Craighead course. Yesterday all the staff were at a demo day by Turfco at Crail on our driving range, they were demoing top-dressers and seeders

 Our first frost of the winter which meant closing the Balcomie course till 10am and opening the back 9 of the Craighead course on winter greens till 10am to allow play

 With the Craighead course on it's winter closure we have in a local Stonemason repairing some of our dyke's

Drainage works on the Craighead course coming on great with all the gravel banding completed so now it's carrying on laying the 6" mains pipe

 Work is going well on the rebuild of the greenside bunker at hole 17 on the Craighead course

 before the rain on Thursday we managed to cut, top-dress, brush in then divot the tees on the Craighead course then the 7mm of rain helped wash in the dressing

 we also have outside contractors in laying over 1000 metres on 6" pipe along the west side of the Craighead course which we will then tap into when draining fairways 3, 4, 5, 7 & 8 in future years, this investment is to help us solve the drainage issues we have had since the course opened in 1998 and will reduce course closures due to flooding

 the gravel banding to the 3rd fairway is nearing completion with over 4000metres done so far

 to help tidy up the 3rd fairway we decided to brush this which helped work the sand into the grass profile around the gravel banding etc ready for play tomorrow