Hi to all members,

Now that the renovations are behind us, and the wetter months are just around the corner, we move focus into a little bit more regular sand top-dressing on our greens and the deep and shallow solid tining. My goal is to sand top-dress every 2-3weeks starting from this Monday; a practice that goes a long way to breaking down the organic matter/thatch, firmness on the green’s surfaces and trueness across them all. Because of our light reno’s back in March we couldn’t get the solid tines over the greens, so we are planning to do that in May.

Upcoming maintenance dates:

17^th of April – sand top-dressing over all the green surfaces;

15^th & 16^th 0f May – Deep solid tining (9 holes shut Monday; 9 holes shut Tuesday) Sand top-dressing.

29^th of May - Sand top-dressing

North Harbour Strokeplay

The club is hosting this year's North Harbour Strokeplay on the 6^th & 7^th of May; a massive event for the club. To help us on the greenkeeping crew you may experience a couple of nine hole closures leading into this event (possibly the week of), we will work with the office to find the quieter days for this.

Course care must be mentioned. Firstly, the pitch marks we are finding over all the greens are very disappointing. The lack of effort to rake bunkers and the replacing of divots with sand or the turf that has been hit out. This is a reminder that it is the golfer’s job to help keep our turf surfaces tidy. There is a lot of talk about who, why and when….. it's simple… if you hit your approach shot into a green keep an eye on it…..if it lands on the green surface there is a good chance a pitch mark will be made, so fix it. My theory is that most of what we find out there on the greens are caused by the higher handicapper who tend to have a lower ball flight and trajectory. The ball is hitting the greens at a lower height and skidding away from where it lands. Before walking to your ball and marking it, have a good look around; your pitch mark starts from when you address your approach shot in!! 

Regards

Daniel Godek

Course Superintendent