Right side of hole 8 fairway is in continual shade year-round If you have golfed at Pender Harbour recently you would have noticed a few soft spots on our fairways. In recent months I have had a number of members come to me wondering what the problem with these areas was. They would often blame the soft conditions on over-irrigation and not enough drainage. Some even blame the soft conditions on broken irrigation pipes! At first glance it would be very easy to think that these were the cause of the soft conditions on our fairways. These soft areas are in fact the result of an unhealthy thatch build up. In order to understand why we have this thatch problem and what can be done to correct it we need to understand exactly what thatch is. Thatch is an intermingled organic layer of dead and living shoots, stems, and roots of grasses that develops between the turf canopy of green vegetation and the soil surface (Beard, James B.). It is caused by the turfgrass growing faster than the c