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.