Bunker Strategies

 

The new bunker styles have been met with overwhelming approval from the membership.  The maintenance on the other hand will need to be tweaked.  It has been a learning curve for our staff dealing with an engineered sand and a concrete liner.  Our old bunkers were firm 90% of the time, especially after rain events.  The new bunkers are softer more frequent and if they are firm, it only lasts for a day or so.  This is a combination of faster draining liners, more coarse sand and the weather.  

When rain does not frequently occur, we have to rely on irrigation to help add moisture to the sand.  Depending on time of year, we try to avoid any unnecessary watering.  We do not have dedicated bunker irrigation but we do have green perimeter and surround heads.  Running these, will help the bunkers but soften the surrounds.  Again, a learning curve.

Recently we replaced our metal spring leaf rakes with a hard plastic leaf rake.  We cut off the end tines on each side and have noticed a big improvement.  Less troughs through the bunkers and we actually flip the rake upside down to do the edges.  When it is wet, we can return to the metal leaf rakes, but for now it seems these rakes are doing the trick.

Of course it is up to the individual to do it properly as well, so it is not a perfect solution yet, but we are heading in the right direction.

Fairway Conversion Continues

 This is the new portion of our 9th fairway.  It was scalped down 14 months ago and managed at fairway height since.  There are growing pains associated with doing this, including having the grass get acclimated to the new heights, getting rid of undesirable grasses, having the grass survive hot and wet stretches and finally aerifying and topdressing these new pieces so they match the existing fairway.  The latter will take years to catch up as this area was rough that never received aeration or topdressing or any other significant cultural practices.  The key now is to remove the unwanted rough grasses.  We could not do this during the summer as our fear was having no grass in these areas so we applied an herbicide 2 weeks ago.  You can now see where some of the grasses are affected by the spray and we are hoping our overseeding will help fill in the stressed turf areas.  By next summer these expansions will look and match much better, however we will still need to baby them along for another season.

Roll With the Punches

 

A superintendents worst fear.  Not much you can do, most of the time it is a sign of aging equipment and a major overhaul is needed on hoses and fittings.  Once you see this, it will not matter what you do, the grass will be dead.

Our staff immediately jumped into action.

By 4:30 most of the effected turf was removed and replaced.  

We are fortunate to have a staff that will do whatever it takes to protect the golf course.

The Other Side of Too Much Rain

 

Besides poor playing conditions, prolonged wet spells also create more issues.  With the constant rainfall, high humidity and warm temperatures, the grass is growing like a weed.  One or two missed days of mowing, usually creates more maintenance.  

If we mow roughs in the morning hours, it creates a mess to clean up.  The top picture not only shows how much rough blowing we need to do after the mow, we also need to clean cart paths or else the clippings get packed into the stone.  By blowing the paths, we also blow stone into the rough.

The past few weeks, we have not had to do any watering, but most of our staff have been on blowers cleaning up the mess left behind, taking away from other items that need attention.

Nursery Progress

 

What a difference a week makes.  As long as we can keep our poa plugs moist we can push them along.  This is 7 days after spreading and rolling.  The next 3-4 weeks will now include topdressing, fertilizing and rolling.  We will decide in another 7 days if we need to apply a small amount of bentgrass seed to help fill in voids.

One Improvement at a Time

 

With some work done around 14 green complex, water flow patterns were changed, creating drainage issues we did not have before.

The staff banged out some drainage on Wednesday morning ahead of the next rain event.  

A much needed improvement.  There are several of these new areas around the course that we will address each week.  Right now with the weather it is hard enough just trying to keep up mowing grass and getting aeration to recover.

Back to the Drawing Board

 

After the recent heavy rains, this area "popped up" in the left rough of 17.  We noticed some thinning last week and then today the area was saturated with standing water.  Once we dug up the area, we found an active drain that was cut and continued to bleed out onto the surface.  We removed the old section and actually drained the entire area and tied into a drain we installed within the last 5 years.  Unfortunately, the saturated conditions will create a rehab of this area with leveling and sodding.  The only positive is that we can still see sodded main lines and laterals that makes digging much easier.  These little issues will continue to arise after each significant rainfall unfortunately.