Bunker Repairs

 

The storm on December 23rd wreaked havoc on our bunkers.  The heavy rains that came in a short period of time washed out every bunker significantly.  Normally it does not pay to repair bunker in the end of December since we have a few more months until we can really get in and fix them, but with a lot of liners exposed and the heaving of staples we figured we would start to push up most of them and then do a full bunker rehab in early April.  Most of the liners are past their life expectancy and each time they wash, they degrade even worse.  In some spots there are no liners left, creating other issues.  Luckily we have Juan here this winter to start the process.

Let the Sun Shine In

 

Work has begun clearing the woodland edge between 10 green and 11 tees.  With sun angles being different this time of year it is difficult to see how this area will improve.  We will go in and remove all undesirable trees, leaving key screening trees for the neighboring billboard etc.  Once the area is cleared, we will clean up the floor, seed to fescue and install some screening plants along the fence along with a green mesh that we will install on the fence for further screening.  This will definitely have a positive impact on the 10th green that right now receives little to no morning sun.  We will keep you updated with our progress.

Divot Damage and Healing

 

This is the 11th tee.  Between the markers are the divots from 1 day of golf over Thanksgiving weekend.  If you look behind the tee markers, those are divots from other days during November that have been filled with seed and soil.  These areas on the tees will not be fully healed until May, but unfortunately golf will ramp up again in April, so it will be some aggressive growing of grass come spring to get the tee to look good for the 2023 season.  

It was ultimately decided to put out mats on par 3s and short par 4s this winter to help our tees get a break and be in good shape come next spring.  Once the mats arrive we will put them out and it will be mandatory to play from them until April 2023.  We will slowly install mats each year throughout the course based on the amount of traffic we receive during the winter months.  Fortunately for the grass, it has been a cold November and play is definitely down or our tees would be really beat up.

The Retirement of a Legend

 

Middle right of the picture is Victor Grant, one of the longest tenured employees at Arcola.  His 40 years covers working in the clubhouse and out on the course, with the last 25 years working as the irrigation technician.  Victor will best be known for his "questionable" pin placements over the past 25 years, even on days when he did not change hole locations.  Victors Revenge is a fun event the club has each season where Vic and the staff can set the course up as a Supers Revenge event.  While the event has turned into a more cross country golf, Vic still enjoyed putting a few zingers out there.  Above, Vic is working on the newly improved blue tee area on 13 and in his favorite position of figuring out wires etc.  Vic had kept a poor irrigation system going for many years until we changed our heads over to Rain Bird.  With all the improvements we made over the last 12 years, Victor had his hands full installing new irrigation or repairing the ones we broke.

Thanks Vic for all your work over my 13 years and the 27 years before I arrived!

Final Step of Fairway Aeration

 

The fairways were Verticut followed by an aeration and topdressed to finish off.  Loro is doing the final brush of topdressing into the holes before the fairways will be mowed for the first time in a week.  Next spring we will do a verticutting, with a deep tine and another topdressing.

11 Pond Tweak

 

As we are in the midst of converting the 11th green to predominantly poa we also had to address the drainage issue with the green.  Before, the water level of the pond was almost a foot above the main green drain, keeping water in the green drainage system for weeks on end.  This week, we went in and added a pond drain that allowed us to lower the pond level a foot, keeping the green drain above water for the first time since the green was built.  You can see in the circle in the picture the green drain in the rocks and the pond was just filled until it started to flow out of the pond drain.  Even after heavy rains, the pond will eventually return to this level after a day or so.  With the pipe in stock, this project cost us about 6 man hours of labor to complete.

Green Speed Results for 2022

 

Our average green speeds for 2022 were tabulated and this is the 4th straight year we have seen an annual increase in our speeds with our highest mowing heights in 4 years.  It is proven with moisture management, venting, growth regulators and judicious nitrogen use we can have good green speeds with less stress on the plants.  The 2 lowest monthly averages were April (when the greens were aerated and not mowed as often) and August (US Amateur).  My guess in the beginning of 2022 would have been July would be the slowest month and August would have been the faster of the two.  We went into a defense mode towards the end of July leading up to the amateur and then was trying to step on the gas for the event.  With the change of weather during the Am, our greens actually began growing and 13-13.3 was all the USGA wanted for our speeds.  By the time the Am was over, we applied nutrients for plant health and backed off rolling which is why the month of August was our slowest but still relatively quick for private club standards.  Who knows what 2023 will bring but we will continue to monitor speeds and how they relate to nutrients, heights, frequency of cut and roll and moisture/weather. 

Proof That Dryject Works

 

The picture is a profile of our green following our aeration and Dryject application.  The dark sand is the mix the green was built with and the white lines you see are dryject sand lines that were injected during the process.  The long one to the right is the most recent one from this week and the line from the left is from another application over the last few years.  You can see how the organic matter accumulates on top of the dryject channel on the left.  That channel now is not as beneficial as the one on the right due to the organic matter cover it.  To remove it we need to aerate and pull cores which is why we need to do it several times per season to prevent all our greens from having organic matter take over.

Aeration Almost In The Books for 2022

 

This past week we did our 2nd aeration of the season.  Our normal aeration is a deep tine followed by regular tining and finished up with a Dryject application on top to close up holes and inject more sand into the holes.  This application we put approximately 125 tons of sand into our greens and approaches.   Normally this is done in mid August which ensures the quickest recovery time, however with the US Am around this date and members having no access to the course for 5 days we decided to push this off to October 31.  This process does take a considerable amount of labor, so trying to push this off any later, we would have had less staff and less daylight to do so.  The first week of November is usually cooler and grass stops growing but right now we will be in the mid 70s for the next few days, so some recovery may occur.  Unfortunately most of the holes will be visible until next spring, especially once temps start dropping.  We will push recovery along as much as possible, but once temps cool down, fertilizers will not do much.

Next spring our cultivation program will be Drill and Fill in March, followed by Verticutting and a 1/2" core aeration on greens.  This will change up what we are doing a bit but will be vital to a successful 2023 season.  We will also be incorporating poa aeration plugs into the 2 practice greens and 11 twice in April.

More Poa Plugs

 

Today marked the 3rd time we applied poa plugs to our 11th green since September.  We have seen an increase in poa since beginning this last year, but only the past few months have we gotten very aggressive with this practice.  In order to get the majority of the green to poa vs bent, we will need to do this when the weather is conducive to poa growth.  Fall and spring are ideal and we will continue to do this at least twice in April of 2023.  We are also going to cover the green this winter to keep temperatures a little warmer to encourage poa growth as well.   Will keep you updated with pictures after the green heals from this application.

Finally

 

We purchased this brush this past spring and planned on using it to tighten up our fairways throughout the season.  With the hot and dry weather we had not been able to use it until now.  You can see how much it stands up the bentgrass and after mowing it returns it to the tight surface it was before.  We did get a decent amount of grass the first time doing this and will possibly do it one more time before winter depending on weather and turf conditions.  This will be a great tool to work topdressing into the canopies this November as well on fairways and approaches.

Time For Some Wear and Tear

 

The putting course was built for enjoyment and for an emergency turf nursery.  We spread the plugs from our greens when we built it and seeded a little bentgrass in as a nurse grass to help it along.  2 years later and the majority of the area is bentgrass with little poa.  This will not be a viable option at this time to sod a green or do a green expansion until we can get more poa into it.  Best way to do this is introduce wear and treat it like all our poa greens.  We will start rolling this or a portion of it when we roll greens, apply more sand and water and make more frequent growth regulator and fungicide sprays.  By allowing this to wilt and for pests to take over, probably removed most of the poa.  

Irrigation Showing Its Age

 

Lucky for us this pipe broke right at 6:15 while the fairways were still running and Andrew was able to spot it in time.  Had this happened in the middle of the night it would have been a complete mess today.  Victor was able to get it fixed pretty quick and the fairway will be operational by the end of today.  

Ready for Divots!

 

We know having 156 of the best amateurs in the world each day using our range, the tee is going to get beat up for 4+ days.  We have been thinking of the best way to clean up the tee each evening to allow us to get it done more efficiently and it looks like we will repurpose our turf sweeper to help with this chore.  If all goes as planned, we can now get the range cleaned with probably half the men and half the time.  This will allow us to use men to help do other important tasks during evening preps.

Changing it Up

 

Normally we would be venting with our deep tine aerifiers right now, but with the dry weather, upcoming heat and the US Am only 3 weeks away, we decided to use the hydroject.  This machines injects water to make a small hole to allow the greens to breathe.  Once done, we will blow off any excess sand and you would not know we did the greens.  If we were to make the normal 5/16" hole, we would be chasing wilt during the day as the greens would dry out too fast.  You have to be flexible with your programs based on weather conditions, time of year and events.  A deep tine vent would be done in about 4.5 hours with 2 machines and this will take 8-12 hours with 2 machines.

The Truth About Venting

 

This morning we vented greens, which normally gets done on Monday mornings.  With our busy outing schedules and early outing shotguns, Mondays are not an option until we get to August and September.  With the Arcola Cup on July 8, the US Am Preview on the 12th and a Member Guest on the 14th, it is now or wait another month.  The pictures above show the process, a tractor punches pencil sized holes in the greens and it is followed by a roller to smooth the surface.  For good measure, we did a stimpmeter reading following the practice and we rolled 15'.4".  No impact on speed, trueness or smoothness.  The only thing now is the the greens will dry down much quicker over the next few days but it is a good trade off after the heavy rains of late. 

Final Preparations Underway for Invitational

 

Venting was done last week, this week we are doing a little verticut on greens before the Invitational on Thursday.  This will help thin the surface a bit to allow for firmer conditions and smoother greens.  The forecast now looks like heavy rain Wednesday night, so looks like more bunker work on the horizon.  Was hoping to get a break from the rain for a week to provide the best possible conditions for the event.  Staff will somehow getting everything back together before Thursday afternoon.

Bunkers Needing Attention This Week

 Deja vu all over again!  Two straight days of 1"+ thunderstorms after a weekend of 2.5" rains and the staff has had their fill of repairing bunkers.  Most of the bunkers drained great and some sand had to be pushed back up on faces.  One of our proactive practices is taking this vibrating aerifier and going into the bunkers to loosen up the floors.  Heavy rain after heavy rain and our already firm sand becomes way too firm and this has been a great tool to allow us to get them back to great playing conditions relatively quickly following the storms.  

Pond Treatment Coming

 

The Curly Leaf pond weed has taken over the pond on #7.  Our pond contractor will have to come and make several treatments to get it under control.  This is going to take a few weeks to control since the pond is shallow and there is quite a bit of fish activity.  Also, once the weeds begin to die, they will take up a lot of oxygen in the pond, which can affect fish.  This is why you hire pond professionals to make these treatments.

Before and After #5

 

An Improvement That Most Likely Will Go Unnoticed

 

This cart path looks no different than any other out on the course.  However, this improvement is so much more than what you see in the picture.  In this location there were 4 asphalt paths going left to the range, right to the dump and a dead end piece in the rough.  All of these were eliminated and sodded over and this new crushed stone path now connects to the path on the hole.  A simple fix, but a lot of work for Pedro and a crew of 5 guys who finished it in about 6 hours.  Sod was taken from the range where we will convert an area of maintained sod to fine fescue, so the cost was minimal.

Planting New Trees

Our tree replacement program continues into 2022 as we have selectively replanted a few lost trees from the past few years.  Here this large London Plane will replace the twin oak that split last year between 16 and 17.  While the oak was in the middle of the rough it did protect from the wayward tee shot and this new tree will do the same, as it was planted within 10 feet of the oak.  We also added a large red oak to the right of #8 that will also protect the wayward shot on a short par 5.  Over the next few years I believe this trend will continue at Arcola as many of our older trees are beginning to decline and in some cases fail.

Improving 5 Tee Area

 

The 5th tee area is shoe horned between boundary fences.  The area above is along some neighboring houses.  You can see honeysuckle vines have choked out the spruces that act as screening, plus the burning bushes that were planted underneath the spruces are now growing sideways.  We originally were going to plant a few spruces in the gap, but decided to just rip out all the thinned out spruces and re plant the area.  A small job but a big improvement when done.

You can see the vines we pulled above that were just in this area and tangled inside some of the spruce trees.

Storage Area Improvement

 

With the recent addition of a new storage building and above ground fuel tanks, we had to pave the area to tie it all together.  Before, all the water pitched into the storage bins, creating saturated materials and no access to get to the materials.  After the recent paving and a lot of work on grading, the water now runs through this area and allows us to function normally for the first time.  This was a great improvement!

Bunker Sand Replenishment

 

The crew spent a good week adding sand and adjusting depths to the greenside bunkers.  For fairway bunkers, we went in and topdressed the surfaces of them and used a sand pro to work the sand in.  The fairway bunkers we want to play firm and avoid any plugged ball issues which is why we keep sand at minimal depths.  

Much Needed Paving Happening

 

Paving taking place around the club in the next week or two.  While most of the clubhouse area was paved a few years ago, we did not address my shop areas and a few needed service roads on the course.  This will be done over the next week or two depending on the weather.

Sodding by 10 Green

 

This picture says it all on 10 green.  The rough was sodded back in 2011 and you can see the morning sun is already behind the trees on 11 tees.  This rough will get no sunlight for most of today.  Add into it the tight space and the rough was starting to thin out the past year or so.  Best bet is to install a tall fescue sod that is more shade tolerant and try and limit equipment traffic behind the green.  Removing trees along 11 tee to improve sunlight is not an option as we need that buffer from the property along the fence.  Eventually this green should be relocated more left of its current location to alleviate all the issues we face in this area.

Greens Aeration Completed

 

A successful spring aeration on the greens.  Greens were deep tined in December, followed by Ninja tine aeration in early March to generate poa plugs for our bentgrass greens.  Following that, we drill and filled, followed by 5/8" solid tine aeration and then a verticutting application with our new Sandfiller machine.  This sets us up for the busy season ahead and will help in firming up the greens.   We purchased the Sandfiller in 2021 to help save on labor and it has already paid dividends.  If we were to verticut using walk behind machines, it would have taken us almost 2 days and almost our entire staff to complete.  With this machine we were done in 9 hours and used about 5-6 guys.  We will incorporate this into our program moving forward.

Spring Bunker Maintenance Beginning

 The process of detailing bunkers begins today and included in this are creating new edges where needed, checking sand depths and fluffing the floors to alleviate compaction.  Once edges are completed over the next week, we will then supplement bunker sand in all bunkers for the season ahead.

Boundary Plantings

 

We are doing a sample planting of some Eastern Red Cedar plugs along the property line on the 5th hole.  These native plants require no maintenance and will fill in nicely along the fence line over the next few years.  If successful, we will identify other areas around the course we would like to use native plants to screen.

Tree Moving

 

A timely moving of a red oak from #1 to #18.  Cool weather and right before the rain, East Coast was able to move the oak without a hint that they were here.  Now that we were able to safely plant the oak, the declining ash behind it can be removed without changing much strategy on the hole.  This ash is inundated with Emerald Ash Borers and will be dead within the next 12 months.  The tree will be cabled for 2022 until it can root in and cables will be removed right before the US Am event here in August.

Drill and Fill

A rare beautiful day in March to do cultivation practices to greens but we will take it.  This process has not been done at Arcola since 2009 and this is beneficial to drill into the subsurface that aeration and deep tine aeration cannot reach.  With XGD in more than 70% of our greens, it is beneficial to do this process now that water has somewhere to go.  Even with 4 machines, it will take us a good day and a half to finish.  We first went on the greens with Ninja tines to remove poa plugs to spread on our bentgrass greens, we then followed with the drill and fill and then aerated on top with 5/8" solid tines.  Dryject will be done on March 29 and that will be the end of major disruption to the greens this spring.  A good amount of sand will be incorporated into our soil profile this spring.

Adding More Poa to 11 Green

 

Better late than never, but we started this process last August of spreading poa plugs from our old greens onto our bentgrass greens (11, Practice Green and Range Practice Green) so over time these greens will perform like the rest of our greens on the course.  We all know that 11 can only take a fraction of the abuse we put on our other greens which is why we want to work our poa into it.  This will obviously take years to make a big difference but we have already seen a significant difference in poa populations in less than 1 year.  

Good Head Start For the Season

 

We are trying to take advantage of the snow free days this winter and get a head start on getting key cultural practices done while play is at a minimum.  Fairways will be topdressed and aerated before the season even gets going.  Once completed, we will then go in and aggressively verticut them after, as long as the turf does not get damaged.  This sets us up nicely heading into a very busy season.

Tree Work Completed

 Steve, Starling and Roberto tag teamed another successful tree pruning month in January.  In all, they were able to prune almost 100 trees throughout the course.  Every hole has now been pruned over the last 2 seasons and we will assess each fall if more pruning is required moving forward.  A big improvement in the overall appearance of the golf course.  Great job!

Bagroom Parking Enhancement

 

Many of you know the bottleneck issues by the bag room, especially on busy days such as tournaments or outings.  Before, only about 8 carts could be parked here and when they were there, no other carts could be in the area without creating a traffic jam for members and employees trying to get through the area.  We removed the hedge and created a retaining wall along 9 cart path to expand the area outward to be able to safely park 20+ carts without creating any traffic issues, even during busy days.  We had to get creative to re attach all the irrigation around the clubhouse that currently runs under the new asphalt roadways.   A big improvement that took a little creativity and some help from DTS.  Once the landscaping and paving is completed, this will be a great improvement.

Emerald Ash Borers

 

The emerald ash borer has been plaguing the east coast for the past 10+ years.  They burrow into and eventually kill the American Ash tree.  Unfortunately, a good part of these trees along our property line on #7 are ashes and are in decline.  Best now to start planning on replanting this area as more than 60% of these trees are ash.  We have 3 remaining ashes out on the course and currently 2 of them are experiencing thinning with the most important one between 8 and 15 greens not affected yet.  It is a matter of time before they are all gone.

The Problems With Bunker Liners

 

The picture shows what happens during the winter months with the freezing and thawing of the ground.  The orange tops you see are the bunker liner staples that have heaved up out of the ground this past winter.  Even though the staples are serrated, they still get pushed out of the ground.  Individuals will now have to go around to each bunker with a rubber mallet and hammer them back in.  This is the main reason that the life expectancy of a liner is only 10 years at most.  

Tree Pruning Starting Up Again

 

Guys are getting after it again this winter pruning trees on the golf course.  Last year we did half the golf course and we are hoping to finish the remaining holes in the next month or so.