Hydraulic leak

As you are out playing over the next several weeks you will see splotchy dead areas across #4 and #7 greens. We had a hydraulic hose break on our greens’ topdresser and leak hydraulic fluid across both of these greens.

Aerification is a vital, yet nerve-racking time for the Grounds department. During aeration, we put very disruptive machines on our most important surfaces- greens, tees, and fairways. While these machines perform well 99% of the time, things can go wrong.

The topdresser is the machine we use to put the sand on top of the surface of the greens. We use it regularly throughout the season to apply small amounts of sand, and at aeration to apply a heavier rate of sand to fill the holes.

With an accident like this, once the oil hits the turf grass, the grass is dead. Initially anywhere the oil hits, the heat from the oil literally cooks the cells and the plant dies. Sometimes, cooling the plant with water immediately after a leak occurs can lessen the damage to individual plants, but may spread the damage to a greater area as the oil moves with the water. Over the next few days following a leak, the damage will progressively get slightly worse as plants nearest to the oil, but which were not directly hit, begin to contact the oil that remains in the soil. These plants may die or become very weak and turn yellow-brown in color. Finally, a clear definition of death will be seen and the full extent of the damage will be known.

Immediately after the leak occurred

2 days after leak

Planning for recovery of these damaged areas is the biggest step to be taken once a leak occurs. The oil cannot be taken back up from the soil, so moving forward with a plan is crucial. Since this leak occurred as we were aerating the greens, we expect to see about 5% recovery naturally as the greens heal from aeration. Next, once the greens are almost completely healed from aerating, we will come back across with the same aerating machine and aerate only the lines of dead turf. If we don’t wait for the surrounding area of the green to heal from the initial aeration, we could risk ripping out too much turf and being left with large chunks of the green missing. Following this second aeration, we will fill those holes with sand and seed. Then we will fertilize both greens and keep the lines moist throughout the day to encourage seed germination. We will maintain these two greens differently than the rest of the course in order to protect the new seed. We will mow at a slightly higher height of cut and we will use a lighter mower. Once we see significant recovery, we will gradually move towards reincorporating these two greens into our regular routine.

100% recovery in the shortest amount of time is our goal. To accomplish this though, there will be an impact on the playability of these two greens. We will do everything we can to make them as similar to the entire course as we can.

2 days after leak

4 days after leak

6 days after leak

6 days after leak

Etiquette Reminder of the Week

When parking your cart at a tee or green, please keep all 4 tires on the cart path.

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org