Carts.....the Necessary Evil

 Most of the wear and tear at many golf courses are from carts and maintenance equipment.  While carts are a necessary evil, they do come at a cost.  Signs, stakes and the labor to move them.  Increased fertility and water and even aeration to alleviate compaction.  Plus the constant plugging or sodding of funneled traffic areas becomes problematic.

This picture is the new path by 9 green.  This entire area is new.  We have directional signs to lead carts to the path, but what happens is carts will drive parallel to the path between the bunker and the path.  If we do not put these stakes up, the thinning here will become dirt and hardpan.  The same thing is by most greens and tees.  Not only are the stakes expensive, they are unsightly and a pain to keep moving when we mow.  I try and stay on my guys to keep all 4 tires on the path when on them and sometimes they forget.  If we can all obey cart signs and utilize the paths properly the golf course will look and play much better.

Wildflowers Served Their Purpose

 

The wildflowers we seeded to the left of 1 tee have done a great job hiding the large area of disturbance that was seeded to fescue in April.  My fear was having this large expanse looking thinned out and weedy all summer, especially from the pro shop, clubhouse and parking lot.  I decided to seed an annual wildflower mix in to give it a quick cover and help support the new fescue and bluestem below.  We have had flowers monthly from June until now, but had a small window of several weeks in September before these Cosmos flowered.  Most felt it looked like weeds and unkept until this happened.  I have extensive experience with wildflowers from my Audubon days at Edgewood and I can tell you they look great in years 1 and 2 but become very difficult to keep looking great year after year, especially when we try and introduce new annual seeds.  The more you aerate or rototill the soils for new seed, the more weed seeds you bring up and then it is a difficult balance.  Enjoy these beauties for the next few weeks!

Maturing Every Month

 

Now that the weather has turned in our favor we can push the new fairway expansions to fill in and start to resemble our other fairways.  Most of this expansion currently is mainly poa with some bent mixed in.  We killed off most of the rough grasses that were there when we scalped last year.  While this is looking so much better, we have to be prepared for next July and August when high temperatures and precipitation can set it back again.  The key now is to aerate, topdress, fertilize and next season make sure we keep these new areas sprayed up.

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.

Building New Turf Nurseries

 With the collection of green cores, we will now build a nursery for greens.  This will be key in the future for repairs or expansions.  We are also building a nursery on the side of the range for fairways and tees with the cores we collected from both.  During the renovation we pillaged all our nurseries and had no source finishing up the summer.  We will be in a good spot in 2027.

Final Steps

 

With the sudden addition of heavy rains this afternoon, it was all hands on deck to blow off, sweep and get the remaining fairways topdressed and brushed before the 2pm rain arrival.  Crew absolutely crushed it in 4 days.  Only have some plugs left in the rough to sweep and remove.

Tees Thrown In the Mix

 

Another long day of pulling cores and shoveling off tees.  

No Rest For the Weary

 

While the crew was working on greens, we had another crew starting on fairways.  This is more simple with pulling cores, dragging, sweeping, topdressing and brushing.  Of course Monday was not a great beginning but the weather turned in our favor.

All In A Days Work

 Step 1 is to core aerate all the greens on the course.

Step 2 is to bury greens in sand and then solid tine on top.

Step 3 is to deep tine all greens except the new greens.  

This entire process started at 5:30am and finished at 5:30pm.  We used approximately 100 tons of sand on the greens.

The Rehab Begins

 Like most renovations and irrigation system installs, growing pains will follow.  Drains get cut, veins in the soil get opened or closed etc.  Now that we have endured drought and extreme rainfall, we are identifying areas that need attention.  Each week we try to pick off an easy fix.

The area between 15 and 16 is suddenly wet and thin.  Our staff went in and installed some drainage and resodded using sod from our old par 3 tee surrounds.  Little expense, huge improvement.

Babying Fairway Expansions

 

The fairway contouring started in the summer of 2025 when we scalped down future fairway lines.  Here is the old 1st hole, which is now our 9th hole.  We basically scalped it from 3" to 1" in one mow, then got it down to 1/2" within 2 weeks.  Over the next 6 months, we sprayed out the rough grasses, leaving only some bent and poa.  We also seeded in some bentgrass to help fill in voids.

Fast forward to August 2026 and it is starting to look like a fairway, but the poa is under extreme stress right now after enduring 5 heat waves, drought and now a lot of rain.  Most likely some bacterial wilt going in on there as well.  The funny part is LaBar had to remove a rock from the fairway and sodded with bentgrass.  Look at how well the bent is and the poa is struggling.  This expansion will be fine by summer of 2027 and it takes a good 18 months for the grasses to get acclimated to being managed differently.

Growing Pains

 

On the left side of 5 fairway where some contouring was done, we noticed a bare spot.  Upon opening the sod, we saw it was a rock.  We figured lets go get a shovel and dig it out.

2 hours later with an excavator we were able to finally get it out.  The funny thing is irrigation went around it as you can see in the top picture where the head is located and how the pipe coming across the fairway turns around it.  These are all the imperfections we will continue to find over the next 6-12 months.

Watch What You Wish For!

 For April, May and June our staff worked extremely hard to keep new sod and seed alive, with high temps, low humidity and almost no rainfall.  I remember hoping for a few downpours to help us keep new grass alive and help germinate the out of play fescue seed.

The rains came and havent let up for almost 3 weeks.  Creating playability issues and hampering maintenance.

Once the humidity kicked, grass has been growing like a weed, leaving clippings everywhere.  Regardless of growth regulators and frequent mowings, once the natural rainfall releases all the nutrients in the soil you are fighting it until the humidity and rainfall subside.

When it Rains it Pours!

 As if torrential rains of late havent been challenging, this large Tulip fell in the pond on 14.  A big machine will be needed to pull it out of the pond once they are able to cut it up.  With limited access this will be a challenge to get this removed without making a complete mess!

This is not the lake on 7 but it is the puddle in front of the range tee.  When we built the range back in 2016, we identified this problem and added drainage.  With the renovation, the drain pipe was cut and not repaired and we are back to square one.  The contractor will have to dig in the berm you see in the backdrop to connect the pipe back to where it drains to.

After a significant rain, we noticed the bunker on 3 was full of water.  How can that be, it is brand new with new drainage.  The outflow pipe under the fairway was inadvertently cut by the irrigation crew and not repaired.  After some digging, we found the issue and resolved it.  

While a golf course renovation and irrigation system replacement projects are stressful enough and once the contractor has left the course, we all assume everything is going to be great.  It took extreme heat and drought this summer to identify irrigation shortcomings and now heavy rains in July and August to find drainage issues.  It will be a good 12 months until we feel we have everything under control.