The fantastic golfing weather continues, the courses are playing short, with plenty of run and low scores have become the norm each week. It’s been a fantastic period for taking to the course.
As we reach the halfway point of the year, it’s safe to say 2025 has already presented one of the most significant challenges in recent memory for golf course management. The past six months have officially gone down as the driest since 1785 — and the consequences for course conditions are both visible and long-lasting.
A real contrast to 2024 which saw over 500 mm of rain in 6 months. During the same period in 2025 there has been just over 200 mm. A huge contrast!
Pros & Cons
With every situation there are pros and cons and as mentioned already the pros of good weather firstly are for golf itself, as it gives great opportunities to get out and play.
Fringing rough is also much lighter at the moment and with our new machinery, keeping on top of growth has been much more manageable. We’ve even been able to make holes much wider than normal which I’m sure many of you will have noticed.
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The Impact of Drought
The lack of rainfall has meant moisture levels in the soil are at historic lows. We had no early spring growth and the course has struggled to retain any consistent turf health due to the ongoing drought. As a result, areas that traditionally bounce back from wear — like tee boxes, walk-off zones, and high-traffic areas — are showing prolonged signs of stress.
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Wear Recovery: A Waiting Game
Normally, natural turf growth during spring and early summer helps us recover from winter wear and general player traffic. This year, however, recovery has been almost non-existent. The grass simply doesn’t have the moisture it needs to regenerate. This means divots are remaining open far longer than usual, blemishes on the greens are still evident and worn areas are becoming more defined with every passing round.
We appreciate how frustrating this can be for players, but it’s important to understand that the turf isn’t being neglected — it’s simply in survival mode. Even with additional seeding, fertilising and targeted irrigation, the lack of water has meant very little germination or regrowth.
Water Availability: A Growing Concern
We have access to only a finite amount of water, and with restrictions in place across the region, every drop counts. This means we must manage our irrigation systems strategically — prioritising greens first.
As custodians of the course, we’re forced to make difficult decisions every day about where our limited resources go. Some areas are looking very sad and different turf grass species react differently. Fine turf shuts down to reserve energy, shrinking as it does, but Ryegrass puts its energy into producing seed, becoming longer, leggy and wiry which makes it hard to mow and ultimately stand out visually within the sward. This is our most problematic issue at the moment and one we have limited power over.
You can help us during this period by understanding that course conditions are being managed as well as nature allows and that some imperfections are inevitable.
You can also help though by:
- Using paths and designated walk-off areas to minimise further wear.
- Avoid walking with trolleys or taking buggies directly next to the greens
- Being patient — recovery will come, but only when nature allows it.
Evapotranspiration (ET)
Evapotranspiration is the natural process by which water is lost from turf through evaporation from the soil and transpiration from the grass plant itself.
At Hunley, during peak summer (June to August), ET rates can exceed 5 mm/day, meaning over 5 litres of water per square metre can be lost daily from our greens, fairways, and tees. While this is normal for this time of year, it’s a significant water demand that can easily outpace rainfall. Recent conditions have seen even higher ET rates, with clear skies, high temperatures and strong winds every day.
What we can do
Irrigate
However, we can only use the capacity (50,000 liters) of our irrigation tank each day, as it requires around 12 hours to refill.
This allows us to put approximately 5mm of water onto 9 greens every 24 hours, so the best we can do is replace the daily moisture lost on just 9 greens! This makes it easy to see the challenge faced.
The wind also makes irrigation coverage less consistent, meaning we are hand watering to try to achieve better consistency.
Wetting agents are crucial and these are applied monthly to help water penetrate the soil more effectively and not just run off the surface.
Although this is obviously very challenging, we would certainly prefer current weather conditions to those of last year. It’s really more of an issue having reseeded the driving range, which has taken a good percentage of available water as we’ve tried to get it back into use.
Protect the Turf
By reducing mowing frequency and also mowing heights, we can alleviate the stress on the turf.
We place hole positions in the healthiest areas of turf where foot traffic can be best tolerated.
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Driving range
Clearly from all this it won’t be a suprise to hear the reopening of the driving range continues to be delayed.
The range was seeded in late March, with expectations based on previous years that it would be ready for use by May/June. However, since seeding, we’ve only received about 75mm of rainfall, that’s not even 1mm a day. To put this in perspective, we recorded 150mm of rain in April last year alone—conditions that would have easily supported strong grass growth and an earlier opening. Even a fraction of that amount this season would have made a significant difference.
The limited rainfall has made it difficult for the newly seeded turf to establish properly. We are continuing to do what we can for the surface to encourage growth, but until the grass is strong enough to withstand regular use, we need to hold off on opening.
We appreciate your patience and understanding, even though this is very frustrating for us all.
It is however getting slowly closer and with a bit of luck on our side, it shouldn’t be too much longer.
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July
It will be more of the same from the team and I’d like to say how well the lads have coped. It’s hard to remain motivated when you know you can’t get things how you’d like, but to produce the standards they are under the circumstances is highy commendable.
Although these blogs are to provide information about course maintenance, it’s sometimes easy to focus on the negatives, as they are what we naturally pick up on first as we strive for perfection. However, it means we can often miss all that is good and so I’d like to finish on just a few of the positives we can take for granted, with a photo gallery to remind us of just a few things our amazing course has to offer!
Thanks for reading!
The course looks and is playing well even with the lack of water. Many of the bunkers are lacking sand, where the clay in the bottom is covered by only a thin layer of sand. They all look good when raked but not good when you try and play out of them. About paths, when you leave Dave’s walking to Wetlands there is a path past the white tee but everyone now cuts the corner behind Morgan’s Mound green. Thus Ned’s roping off.