Last Tree Being Removed

If you remember Memorial Day weekend was book ended with 2 storms and we lost a total of 5 trees, phone service, power to the pump house and to the street lights.  This tree here on 12 was the only one we could not clean since it was hung up in other trees.  Downes Tree came in last night to remove it for us.   Lets hope this is it for storms and rain for a long time. 

New Fairway Roller and New Headache!

We took delivery of our new fairway roller this past week.  We bought this unit to remove dew on fairways on days we do not mow and to help firm them up on days we do not mow.  Unfortunately, the first day we used it, a hydraulic line was not connected properly and spewed oil on our 6th fairway and 7th approach.  We will see brown lines on these fairways due to the heat of the oil for the next few weeks.  In the meantime, we will continue to verticut the bad areas and use some dye to hide it.  We will think twice about purchasing anything from this company again in the future.

New Fairway Roller

We just received our new fairway roller this morning and we are trying it out.  This is a great supplement on days we do not mow fairways.  The rollers help remove dew which in turn reduces disease opportunities and helps firm up the surfaces.  This will be especially beneficial on weekend mornings when we are busy.  It will take one person 4 hours to do all the fairways but it may be well worth the investment. 

Assistant Superintendents

Picture from right to left are Senior Assistant Patrick O'Brien and new Assistant Superintendents Matthew Carmichael and Steve Gauli.  Patrick is going on his 4th season with us and has been a pivotal part of our staff.  Matt comes from Newton CC and Wild Turkey and is a recent graduate of the Rutgers Golf Management program.  Steve is coming from Ballyowen GC and he too is a recent graduate of the Rutgers program.  The key for me is to prepare these young men to become successful Superintendents in the future and to teach them how to present a golf course in championship conditions on a daily basis.  They are learning what it takes to prepare a course each day and how to handle adversity when it arises.  These guys are the keys to the success of Arcola each and every day.

Take Lightning Seriously!

On Thursday this 80 ft oak on our 12th hole took a direct strike about 10 minutes after the Thor Guard went off.  Unlike most lightning strikes where the tree is hit and survives for a few months after, this one literally was blown into pieces.  Please heed the warning when the alarm goes off, another hole or putt is not worth it.  The landscape of the hole looks different now without this tree on the right so we will be looking at solutions to improve the hole in the future.

Bunker Rehab on 18

The green side bunkers on 18 getting a little rehab this week.  The edges were too steep before and not stable enough to withstand foot and mower traffic so we added burlap bags to help allow the sod to get a better hold during the summer months.  The key now is to keep golfers from stepping on them until the sod gets rooted in.  A nice improvement that took a lot of prep work.

Fixing Drainage in 13 Fairway Bunker

We are addressing the fairway bunker on 13 today with a new outflow pipe.  When we rebuilt the bunker back in 2014 we tied into the existing outflow pipe.  The bunker has been poorly draining the past few years and now we tied the drainage into our new fairway drainage we did several years ago.  This will surely help with playability and with labor as we will not have to pump it out anymore.

Not as Bad as I Thought

Been meaning to do this for a few years but we finally started deep tining fairways.  We started on our wettest ones first.  I figured we would destroy the deep tiner so we purchased a third one this year to convert this one into a fairway one only.  Spacing was just right with no disruption to fairways.  We did the wettest areas on the 5th and 6th holes today.  Thursday we will do 3 and 16.  Eventually we will be doing substantial drainage on 5 and 16 in the fall and we will be doing 3 laterals tomorrow on #6.  We will see if this will make a difference.