Early this week we noticed a strip of damage on the right side of the 7th green that appeared after last weekend’s competition.
We believe this has been caused by granular fertiliser burn where the application has been overlapped slightly and insufficient water has been applied to wash the granules into the surface.
We have now conducted a water catch test and found that this green is receiving half the amount of water for the same watering interval as our other greens. Further investigation has demonstrated that the lateral pipework around this green is of a significantly lesser diameter than that of all other greens (80mm instead of 100mm) which has the effect of reducing the flow rate. Furthermore, this reduction in water flow was not recorded in the current system and It appears that the solution in past years has been to run the station for up to 4 times longer during hot weather.
We have been unaware of this problem until now.
The turf surface should mostly recover over the next week however any small dead areas will need to be re-turfed using our nursery supply.
As we are about to progress with the irrigation upgrade late next month, we will take the opportunity to upgrade this affected section of pipe to bring the diameter in line with the remainder of the course and standardise our watering protocols.
It must be stressed that this has not been because of an error by our Course Team but rather a problem with our infrastructure and the lack of accurate recording of flow rates within the current system.
