Met Am Timeline

After Wednesday afternoon final prep, heavy thunderstorm hits the course

During Thursday stroke play, another storm rolls in and suspends play for several hours

Fridays match play portion is cancelled in the afternoon due to flooding

Saturday morning the staff comes in to torrential rains, staff stays for 10 hours to get course ready for play at 3pm.  No mowing done, but all bunkers repaired and all turf squeegeed. 

By Sunday afternoon a champion has been crowned and the tournament finishes on time.  For the exception of Saturdays washout, greens rolled between 12 and 13 every day regardless of weather.  A big thanks to my staff for going above and beyond the past 5 days.

Difficult Met Am So Far

We all know the dreadful weather we had before this week and now it has rained every day since Tuesday.  The crew has done a remarkable job keeping up with the weather.  We have started work at 4am the past few days, had volunteers come in to help and then had to bring the crew back twice to help squeegee water off playing surfaces after thunderstorms in the pm rounds.  So far the course is holding up but we have not been able to mow our wet fairways in the past few days and they are showing signs of water stress from constant puddles sitting on them.  You can only squeegee for so long until the grass will die off.  High temps are expected tomorrow so the rain tonight is only going to make things worse.  A big thanks to the crew for getting us to this point so far with 2 more days of matches to go.

Getting Sprays Done

We finally broke down and did a full spray to our experimental (no spray) fairways.  To date, we made 1 light application for dollar spot back in early June when we started to see the fungus.  Now with the rain forecast for almost a week straight and high humidity we cannot take the chance that we will make it through.  You cannot control brown patch with nutrients and the weather now is conducive to many diseases.  When we can control the water it is much easier to control fungus, but the weather we are having now is too tough to predict.  With the Met Am, the Clambake and the Morgan Hoffmann outing all in the next 3-4 weeks, we cannot be playing catch up.
I am proud that 1/3 of our fairways or 10 acres have only received 1 full fungicide spray to date.  I am confident as long as the weather does not get too crazy this spray should get us to Labor Day. 

The Weather Is Not Cooperating

What a stretch.  Dry conditions, followed by rain during the Stoddard Cup last week which delayed play and shortened the event to 27 holes.  That was followed by high humidity and triple digit temperatures and then yesterday a pop up thunderstorm flooded the course and lightning took out the big oak by the 1st tee.  Luckily nobody was injured but the weather has been extremely difficult to deal with.  Our next big event this Friday the Arcola Cup the forecast is calling for much of the same, 1" of rain and thunderstorms.  Now, we are moving up to a 7:30 shotgun to try and get at least 18 holes in.  I can deal with the humidity but when you cant control the water applied to the grass, things can get dicey quickly.  Again, my crew always rises to the occasion, whether we have to start at 4am or stay late, they make it happen and make us all look good.  They are the unseen heroes at Arcola.

Hot Mulch!

We had mulch blown into our flower beds this past Monday evening.  Usually we do the mulch first and then add flowers but with the weather our contractor was backed up and could only come Monday.  Mulch is usually very hot to begin with and on top of that sitting in the truck for a few hours when they applied it, the heat stunted all the annuals and actually scorched the bed edges.  The annuals while ugly will recover and already are pushing new flowers out and the grass will green up as well but goes to show you how something so basic can become a headache.

Just A Reminder

A reminder about our bentgrass conversion program on fairways.  Here you see the yellowing from a recent growth regulator application (Trimmit) that stunts the poa for about 3 weeks.  Once the poa is stunted we put out some nitrogen applications to encourage the bentgrass to really push growth.  Throw in the mix we allow annual bluegrass weevils to eat the poa to some extent and we have a great ability to lessen our poa populations.  Remember we also allowed the fairways to seed out which weakens the poa even more.  Notice here on the 12th fairway (our weakest fairway) how much bentgrass we have.  The bentgrass populations have more than doubled since we started this program and removed a bunch of trees to allow more sunlight.

Lawn Area Nearing Completion

The bulk of the heavy lifting is done.  The black tee above the rock wall is done but we cannot finish our tie ins until the stair case is installed.  A few smaller rocks are needed on the wall to tie into the steps as well.   Some minor sodding is left to do along with 2 sets of blue stone staircases which will require a lot of plywood and careful work not to disturb all the finished work.
The good news is the sod was laid on Thursday and the area has been mowed twice already and topdressed and sprayed.