If It Aint Broke....

 

You know the old saying, "if it aint broke, dont fix it".  A lot of this pertains to maintaining a golf course.  Sometimes we have perfect weather years and the course looks great and we will do the same thing the following year since it worked before.  No two years are a like and what may have worked before, may not work this go round.

Take our approaches for instance.  They have been mowed by hand for years and always looked great.  However, we could never get them to firm up like our greens.  A big part of it is our inability to dial in watering on our approaches, whatever the surround head hits or the fairway head hits and that is it.  We also need to add some drainage too and continue to aggressively remove thatch.  But one thing that was simple was the hand mowers.  They are very light and often times the operator will allow the machine to bounce and hop around, not giving us a tight or consistent cut.  Yes, there are complaints that our approaches are too tight and we have slightly raised heights.  What if we took a fairway mower, put a solid roller on it to lessen wear from turning in tight areas and put a good operator on it.   After a few days of finding a good way to mow them, we have now embarked on this practice.  The fairways look much tighter even though they are higher than before.  Also, the weight of the mower will hopefully help firm up approaches in the long run.  Of course we will monitor this and if we start to see wear we will adjust on the fly or simply go back to hand mowing.  In the meantime, we have seen an improvement in firmness and need 1 less employee now to do approaches.

Aeration Progress

 

This was 10 green on Tuesday afternoon.  Wednesday we had dryject come in and do a sand injection application on the green.  We pulled a lot of organic matter out on this one application.

Here is the same green on Tuesday morning, 6 days after our dryject application and final cleanup.  The priority now is closing holes up quickly and then we will worry about getting good mowers out to get quality cuts.

Lightning Strike

 

This large white oak to the right of the 9th tees and fairway was hit by lightning last week.  While the tree is still viable now, next year it will probably not leaf out again.  We are only a month or two before leaves will be changing and dropping so it will be difficult to know if it is dead or not, but based on other strikes, it will be dead.  You can see on the bark where the strike occurred high up in the canopy and traveled into the root system below the ground.  This tree is not a key tree or provide any strategic value to the hole but it is another nice tree on our property that will have to be removed.  

We all see the maple on the right side of 18 that was significantly damaged a month ago during a thunderstorm.  This tree will have to be removed this winter for safety reasons and we will consult with Andy Staples on a replacement plan for it as this tree did provide some strategic value to the 18th hole.

Starting to Prepare for the Renovation

 

The crew is starting to remove the sod from old 7 tee now that we are not using the par 3 anymore.  This is pure bentgrass that we will use throughout the course.  This large tee area will now become our new green nursery using our aeration plugs next week from the greens.  This will be beneficial when we do green expansions or make new greens bigger than the current greens.

Where Andy Staples widened our fairways we were able to scalp down our existing rough and start converting to bentgrass with herbicides, seeding and topdressing.  Here you see where much of the expansion is Kentucky Bluegrass, this will not transition to fairway grass properly and is thinning out due to the low mowing heights.  We are stripping this area out and using the sod from old 7 tee to get it to match better.  We are doing this on holes 10 and 13 also.  

The Practice Area is For Practicing

 

This is normally something we see on a Monday outing when they play scrambles.  Unfortunately, this is becoming more common Tue-Sun on the course as well.  This was Friday afternoon, after my staff just filled all fairway divots for the weekend.  Not only will this be visible all weekend, there is a good chance a members ball could land in one of these.  My staff will normally fill divots one to two days a week depending on outings.  To help protect the course, please replace your divots and only practice on the driving range.  

Wildflowers Adding Some Benefit

 

The area left of the driveway has been a natural area for many years.  We decided this past winter to add some interest and benefit to it.  I seeded in wildflowers after removing the vegetation.  The picture below does not do it justice but the colors are striking.  This year annuals will dominate the area and perennials will follow.  We will have to add more annual seed next year to keep the interest up most of the season.  The only non wildflower plants in the meadow are milkweed, which are beneficial to monarch butterflies and produce a flower as well.  In order to remove the milkweed either by picking or spraying, we would have to walk through the area, damaging or killing flowers.  Better to leave it be.

Fairway Expansions

 

Under the guidance of Andy Staples, we began adding our fairway expansions in now, a year before the renovation of the golf course begins.  Originally, we were going to move fairway sod around or purchase new sod, but by doing this now, we have a good 18 months to get the new fairway expansions to match up to our original fairway lines.  Above you will see how we scalped the rough down, verticut and topdressed, sprayed out the rough grasses and in only 2.5 months, we are already looking pretty good.  Doing it this way also saved us almost $100,000 vs buying or moving sod.