Recovery programs

August is winding down, which is surprising because it felt like it just started. We are managing the turf one day at a time right now. For the most part we have survived summer pretty well up until now. Bermuda grass is doing excellent, and greens are pretty good. One aspect that has suffered is anywhere we have ryegrass. Tee boxes on holes 5-9 and 11-13 have all declined in the last few weeks as well as spots on collars. Any ryegrass in the rough around the greens has also declined recently. This is not the first time this has happened and we are not making any excuses; we are as frustrated and embarrassed to see it is as you are.

We will be selecting a few more tees on holes 5-9 to convert to Bermuda grass this week. The ryegrass is an under-performing grass in the heat of the summer and requires more attention than we are sometimes able to give, and sometimes even declining with attention anyway. We have not determined exactly which tee boxes will be converted just yet. Once we do, the tee markers will be moved forward and backward to other tee boxes as the new sod heals. In previous years, when we have made this conversion, the new sod takes 10-14 days to be ready for play again, so this will not be a long-term inconvenience. All of the tee boxes have recently been reseeded to improve the turf cover heading into fall, and those that are not selected for conversion will begin to heal and fill in with new grass.

We will also be spot seeding the collars where the ryegrass has failed. Again, this is a combination of scenarios that caused a decline in the quality of turf grass. We expect the upcoming cooler daytime and overnight temperatures this week, as well as into September, to aid in recovery of the collars.

The rough around the greens has again started to suffer from the heat as well. While we are pleased that some of the changes we made from last year to this year did help, we are nowhere near satisfied with the quality of the current product. You can read here about some of the reasons for the decline and some of our recovery strategies. This season we also spent more man-hours hand watering the rough immediately around the greens. We saw a tremendous benefit from this and it is something we will continue to do. The linked post also talks about the adjustment of certain sprinklers, which helped, but we also changed the nozzles in those sprinklers to control how far the water is sprayed. We found that in many cases the water was being delivered too far away from the green. Our thought was that it is more important for the grass closest to the green to be the best rather than the grass a farther distance away. For example, previously the sprinklers were doing a great job of watering the grass 75 feet away from the green, but a poor job of watering 25 feet from the green. By adjusting the nozzles we have helped shore this up. Finally, we did spot seeding in the past around the greens, only in areas that were bare. This year we will be doing multiple passes the entire way around the green. We will use tall fescue seed which is much more heat tolerant than the ryegrass.

This picture is prior to switching nozzles. You can see that nearest the green and farthest from the green are the healthiest. However, the middle section, between the two lines, is suffering. We made the decision to force the grass that may suffer further away from the green, which is shown in the second picture.

This picture was taken this summer, our first summer with the new nozzles. You can see that our strategy has improved
the conditions nearer to the green. Now, the turf that is suffering from drought stress is the farthest grass from the green,
and will have the least amount of impact on playability.

The golf course has its black eyes right now. We have started or will start a recovery program for each aspect that has suffered. We also have taken into account things that have worked this year to help us heading into next year, as well as things that may have worked against us. We continue to strive for improved conditions each day.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please do not climb up the steep face of the bunkers.

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org