With the first day of summer a little more than two weeks away now, we just wanted to give everyone another brief update on the status of the golf course conditions, projects, and task we have been doing.
The greens have been coming along well, in spite of the early 90 & 100 degree heat we have been experiencing. The new greens have held up tremendously throughout the first round of high temperatures, realizing that it isn’t the day time highs that are critical, rather the night time lows. Hopefully the heat‘s duration won’t be as long as last year. There is some deeper rooting now and some pretty good turf cover on top. This is very encouraging at this time of the year. The organic layer on our greens is still beyond the 1/4'” depth that is recommended in maintaining a healthier turf grass, therefore, additional aerification applications will be needed in the summer and fall seasons after the Member guest. This will help to alleviate some of the organic layer, and promote denser, deeper roots. We will be core aerifying with 5/8” core tines sometime late summer or early fall. Also with the hot weather you will notice the presence of the hand syringe teams on the greens throughout the day. Please, Please, Please, yield to these people and allow them the opportunity to perform their duties before you hit to the greens. This is an extremely time sensitive and important task that has to be done to help keep the grass cool in the extreme heat of the summer. We have started to run the fans on some of the greens and will be in the process of moving and adding some additional fans in the next few weeks. We will mount the new fans on dedicated trailers that will allow us more flexibility with placement and also the added ability to remove fans in the months when there not needed.
As most of you have noticed the collars have made tremendous progress on filling back in. Some of weaker collars have been re-grassed with new sod off the driving range. The collars in full sun (3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 15) are doing much better and will not have to be sodded. With a second light aerification and fertilization around the collars, these areas are expected to be back to normal shortly. Also, there are several areas we will begin to sod this upcoming week; around the pedestrian bridge on 18, the approach around the putting green and behind 12 green, and various other bare areas and rough spots on the golf course.
The tees and fairways are still struggling to fill in and green up completely. While the weather has been conducive for the Bermuda grass growth, the lack of rain in the month of May has hampered turf growth. May has only produced .5” of precipitation. They are still a little off color so we have recently fertilized them and are hoping for some much needed rain fall. We hope to be out in the next few weeks knocking out some more weed spraying around the tee complexes. The weeds that we saw early in the year have been sprayed on the entire course and a repeat spot application was necessary to control the remaining weeds throughout the course and driving range. Because it has been a great spring for prolonged weed germination and growth. We will be aggressively spraying weeds with post emerge controls along with our additional pre-emerge applications of herbicide through the rest of this season and into the next.
We have been and will continue to go through the bunkers and look to loosen up any hard pan conditions that persist. We are on a regular program now of grooming and rock picking. We will add sand were we determined it is needed. We have also added some new tools to help in controlling the weeds on the floors of the bunkers. We will be trying to add staff to help with the increased frequency of maintenance.
We are finishing up on an evaluation of all projects and special needs for the golf course. We will be communicating our findings and recommendations to you in future updates. This will include plans and schedules.
Thank you for your time and interest. We hope you are enjoying the golf course, and if not, please let us know what we might do to make your experience more enjoyable. If you have not been out, we hope you all will please come out and enjoy the golf course soon! And while using the course remember to repair all ball marks.
Thanks again, Sam Murphy
