2016 has now passed us by, and from a rainfall standpoint, the 72mm we received in December took us well past the previous highest yearly rainfall in the past 10 years. 2016 saw 534mm of rain for the 12 month period, which eclipsed 2010, where 424mm fell. Our 2016 total was in fact more than double the 2015 tally of 259mm, which has provided very positive benefits to the golf courses.
A large portion of the rain that fell during December was received in a rapid burst the night of Tuesday 27th, with 52mm of rain being dumped on the course in a short space of time. Whilst it is always good to receive rain during the summer months, we would much rather see a nice steady fall over a longer period allowing plenty of time for the moisture to soak in and be of most benefit to the turf, rather than a dump of rain that created standing water throughout many areas of the course, particularly in the east bunkers.
As seen in the photos of bunkers on 13 and 16, there was a significant amount of water in the bunkers, filling them completely and spilling out onto adjacent fairway areas.
Along with the standing water that we had to pump out, the nature of the rainfall washed the majority of the sand from the faces to the floors, leaving many channels that required a lot of work to repair.
Following pumping, we had 6 staff working all day for the entirety of Thursday and Friday to return the bunkers to a playable state, which wasn’t an ideal scenario in a short week during the festive season when we are invariably behind trying to achieve all of our routine maintenance tasks.
The sheer volume of moisture that has entered bunkers that suffer from drainage issues has left them even more susceptible to being a little wet, and we are being mindful with irrigation cycles to ideally not allow too much water into the sand whilst at the same time meeting the requirements of the turf on the surrounds, which has to be able to cope with sustained golf traffic. There are some bunkers that will require a top up of sand, which we will continue to assess and adjust as required.
Thanks to the course staff for a great job of getting the course back into play in the time frame they did, and to the members for their understanding of disruption to play during a very busy period of golf on our courses.
Richard James
Course Superintendent