Looking ahead to fall projects

 

Today is the last day of meteorological summer. The last few years, summer-like weather has extended into September, and we would not expect that trend to slow down, but with day lengths shortening and normal temperatures dropping, we are headed towards fall. This means leaves, recovery, and projects. Here are some things we have planned:

Drains- We will be adding drains to the poor areas on 4 green, 8 green, 9 green, and 15 green. Similar to what we did on #17, these new lines will only work to remove water from the bad area and the immediate vicinity, not the entire green. However, the benefit will be noticeable. The puddles of standing water in each of these areas will be eliminated, allowing the turf to survive much easier through the summer.

Bunker renovation- This fall we are scheduled to renovate the bunkers on holes #3, #17, and the Chipping green practice bunker. Just like we did last year and previous years, we will remove the old sod around the edges, locate the original bunker edge, then lay new grass. The work at the chipping green bunker will be especially delicate due to the large volume of sand that has been ejected from that bunker onto the green. We will carefully remove some of the grass on the green, get the built-up bunker sand out from underneath, and then carefully replace the same sod back onto the green.

Seeding- Our fall seeding efforts will continue as well. Our routine green surround seeding is always on the list. We will also be adjusting some fairway/rough edges through seeding as well. We did this in a few places last year- #1, #5, #10 for example- and the results were terrific. The goal is to seed into existing Bermuda grass (either intermediate cut or fairway) that is performing poorly because of shade and use the new cool season seed to make the area into rough. The benefit of this method is that there is no tree removal. We simply change the shape of the fairway and rough in the under performing section. The rough gets better in these particular locations and the Bermuda grass does better too. This tactic is not possible in every situation, but we have identified a few more places to do again this fall.

Recovery/Improved Fall conditions- Not all our attention will be on projects. We will also continue to make sure that the recovery we have started, continues until conditions are back to everyone’s expectations. The above projects certainly add to improved conditions, but more in the long term. We want to make sure that this fall’s playing conditions are as good as possible also.

If all these projects go well, and the weather is still cooperating, we will also add new drains to #1 fairway, #8 fairway, and #11 approach.

There is never a shortage of projects and plans after the season. We are ready, and fall is a great time to tackle the work.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be conscious to not cut corners with your golf cart. The inside edges of turns are easily worn out after repeated traffic.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Early signs of recovery

This upcoming week will remind us of July, but we finally got a quick break last week, and we are headed in the right direction now. We have been working hard on our recovery programs and the weather finally helped a little.

We were treated to some much-needed cool overnight temperatures and a few mild day-time highs as well. Not only are these beneficial for the existing turf on the greens, it is also great for the seed we have been putting out. Many physiological processes within the turf plant slow considerably or cease altogether when air temperature, soil temperature, or both get too high. Having both measurements lower has helped tremendously.

This is the hand dimple seeder we used on the greens
as well as collars.

Here is a close-up view of the actual 
spikes on the seeder. Each spike pokes a small hole
and we spread seed into the holes by hand.

All bad areas on greens have been seeded twice now. The seed has germinated and is growing already. This is a good start, but we are a long way from full recovery. We will continually make light, soluble fertilizer applications to promote growth and vigor. This young grass must establish itself and be ready to handle the heat, humidity, and stress to which the original turf succumbed.

While it works to grow, we will also be encouraging these seedlings to spread laterally to fill in the voids. We do this by mowing the grass and slowly decreasing the height of cut. This process cannot be rushed, or the young grass will be shocked by the abrupt scalping and die.

If you look closely you can see the evenly spaced tufts of 
grass in the bad area. These are the new seedlings
growing in the small holes created by the dimple seeder.

A wider shot showing all of the new seedlings in an over-seeded area.

We are halfway done seeding the collars also. At this point, we are doing this by hand, to maximize the amount of seed we get out and to get the seed more accurately where it is needed. Later in the fall, we will seed the collars again using our tractor-mounted seeder, which does a great job in big areas but cannot maneuver in small spaces. No seeds have germinated on the collars yet, but we expect it to begin soon. As we monitor the development, if more seed is needed, we will not hesitate to go around the course again.

While we are far from healed and back to normal, the process has started, and the early results are encouraging. We will continue to be diligent to get the course back to what we all expect as soon as possible.

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be conscious to not cut corners with your golf cart. The inside edges of turns are easily worn out after repeated traffic.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

August update

 

We continue to battle the rain. We had to reschedule aeration and we are falling behind on mowing. Here are a few updates on what is happening: 

1.       We are now at 11.5” of rain since July 22^nd. Some heat has continued, and overnights have not been cool yet either. This has not allowed for true recovery of turf yet. It also severely hampers what we can do on the course. Heavy mowers must be very strategic just to cut something. Cutting all the rough has been virtually impossible. Greens, tees, and fairways are also very difficult to maintain when they are that wet. We will continue to work hard to get things back under control.

2.       Though we had to reschedule aeration, the new dates went well. We were able to complete all our tasks, on time and without major interruptions. Compost was applied to the Bermuda grass as well and now healing can begin.

3.       We have started to work on recovery for the poor areas on greens and collars. All the bad spots on the greens have now been seeded. Another round of seeding will be done in a few weeks. This week we will also start seeding the collars.

4.       In between rains at the end of the week we were also able to aerate both soccer fields and seed the upper field. This is the time of year that we regularly close the upper field for an extended period of maintenance. Aeration, seeding, and sod where necessary are all part of the plan. In normal years, it also provides a break from play for the field after a long spring and summer. The field reopens in early September refreshed and ready for the fall season.

5.       Lastly, here are a few pictures to follow up from the discussion a few weeks ago. We tried to mow greens when they were borderline too wet. We came across a wet area on the chipping green that is not normally wet, it was mowed, and scalped. That was the determining factor for deciding not to mow any more that day. We expected the turf to suffer, and it has. The point, though, is that spots similar to these could have been on every green instead of just the chipping green (though we do have bad areas on other greens, most are not directly a result of mowing the turf when it was to wet). So, the greens were long, and putted very poorly. But most of the turf did not suffer like in these pictures.

It continues to be a difficult stretch of weather and turf conditions. We are committed to continuing the repair effort and dealing with whatever Mother Nature gives us.

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be conscious to not cut corners with your golf cart. The inside edges of turns are easily worn out after repeated traffic.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Poor conditions

 

There are several areas of the course that are in poor condition right now. There are a few contributing factors, but the weather has played an outsized roll. We have plans for short term repair and long-term improvements to help each situation in the future

Since July 22^nd, we have received 8.77” of rain. That much rain causes all sorts of issues, some of which we have just recently discussed, here and here. Sometimes the moisture can cause disease, prevent us from maintaining certain areas, or just be a nuisance. Other times, the excessive moisture can plain kill the turf. This July was the 3^rd hottest July ever. It set a record for the most 90+ degree days in any month, ever, with 28. The low temperature has not dropped below 70 degrees in 42 straight days…and counting. We do not post this information as an excuse, but rather to show how difficult the recent stretch of weather was and continues to be. We cannot control these factors and they are all working against us.

Right now, we are seeing several examples of excessive moisture killing grass on greens. The soil becomes so saturated that there is no oxygen available for the roots. The plants cannot transpire and overheat and suffocate. It does not take long in 90-degree temperatures for death to occur. This is mostly to blame for the bad spots on 4, 8, 9, 15, and 17 greens. 4, 8, 9, and 15 all are scheduled to have small drains put in this fall to alleviate a majority of these issues, similar to what we did on 17 green last year, though less extensive. Although it will not be an immediate fix, in the long term it will greatly reduce these issues from recurring.

We are also struggling with several areas in the collars. The collars are the narrow band immediately around the greens and include the slightly wider area that separate the greens from the Bermuda grass approaches. The collars receive a great deal of traffic: golfers walking across, mowers turning around and mowers cutting the collar itself. This adds up. Also, the collars are currently a mixture of several grasses, some of which do ok in the heat, some of which do very poorly. Add in too much water and selection starts to take place- the strongest survive and the others do not. We see this in the pinch points on 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 14 collars. Though several others have thin turf, these are the worst spots. In the short term, we will seed into these areas with grass that is continually bred to handle our conditions better and better. However, we are developing plans to also lay new sod in the worst areas once the busiest of the season passes. This new sod will serve as a test to see if it will be a viable option to possibly replace the collars on the entire course in the future.

Lastly, the rough around the greens has declined again this summer, though not nearly as much as years past. This is a positive trend, though still hard to deal with. The rain has less to do with in this instance than the heat. The immediate area around the greens used to be collar. Those of you who have been here many years will remember the collar being more than twice as wide as it is currently. When we resized it, we let the old collar turf grow taller and adjust to being rough. However, the soil underneath was still “collar/green” soil, meaning very high sand content, and it does not support rough height turf the same way as it would a collar, tending to dry out very quickly. And the rough grass was treated differently by us also- our watering practices were mostly to allow the irrigation system to solely provide the necessary water. However, as we have managed this issue, we have increased our attention to this area. Our full program of proper seed selection and twice-yearly seeding, twice yearly aeration, extra fertilization, and hand watering are all paying off. We will continue to adjust so that the improvement continues and work hard to speed up the process.

There is a reason our area is called the transition zone- there is no one type of grass that performs best in all areas. This why we have warm season tees and fairways (Bermuda grass) and cool season greens, collars, and rough (Annual bluegrass, ryegrass, bentgrass, and tall fescue). For our situation, it would not work to have all warm or cool season grass in every area. So, we continue to work hard battling the weather to provide the best course possible and repairing things when we fall short.

 

Please note, aeration begins today, with 9 holes open Monday and 9 holes open Tuesday. Thank you. 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be conscious to not cut corners with your golf cart. The inside edges of turns are easily worn out after repeated traffic.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Still too wet for some things

It has continued to be wet with the forecast to stay wet for the next several days. This past weekend we were unable to produce the putting green conditions we would like, and that most of you would expect, because of the soggy conditions.

We know most of the areas that stay too wet on the course. Whether it is greens, or tees, fairways, or rough, the same locations stay wet time after time. We slowly work on getting drains into place, but that takes time and every wet area cannot be completed at once. So wet spots remain. Using machines in wet areas causes damage: ruts, compacted soil, and death to the turfgrass.

Saturday was a relatively dry day, though it was foggy to start, overcast, and humid. Still drying out from the rain on Friday, we were only able to roll the greens. Mowing when it is too wet is a surefire way to thin and kill the turf.

Sunday is when we were really put in the most difficult position. Though Saturday did not produce any rain, we also did not evaporate much moisture out of the soil. Then, overnight, we received a small, but significant bit of rain. Any moisture that did evaporate during the day on Saturday was replaced by this small rain shower early Sunday morning. We hoped to be able to mow greens Sunday morning, and the small bit of rain complicated things. We attempted to mow the practice chipping green. The operator began as normal, but after several passes he encountered an over-saturated area which was not a usual spot to be wet.

Notice the orange-brown area. That is where
the mower cut too deep into the turf canopy and scalped it.

The same area on the practice chipping green. Our goal is to avoid this 
at all times. We chose not to mow any more greens
after seeing this first thing.

We had already scouted a few wet areas on the course prior to mowing. We felt we could successfully avoid those areas and still get a cut on the greens. However, once we encountered a wet area that was not typical, we were faced with a decision: 1. Continue mowing and chance running across other wet areas we were not expecting- thus almost certainly causing damage by scalping the turf; or, 2. Stop mowing and roll instead- thus avoiding causing damage at the most difficult time of the year. And there is no option to change our minds later, with golfers ready to play soon, we must decide then and there.

Here is the reason why we have explained all of this: none of this is apparent to most golfers. Instead, the only thing most people noticed about Sunday was that it was a little wet and greens were terribly slow. Had we continued mowing, we probably could have mowed 80 percent of the greens without incident. But that leaves 20 percent that could potentially be damaged. And there is no doubt that all golfers would notice the 20 percent damage.

So, in the short term, conditions were not good Sunday. While we try to make everyday as good as can be, we must always be looking towards the next day. Going for broke one day may make for a good day, but it may also make the next several days or weeks a real struggle.

 

Please note: Aeration has been postponed until 8/10-8/12 due to weather. The process will remain the same on the new days.

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be conscious to not cut corners with your golf cart. The inside edges of turns are easily worn out after repeated traffic.

 

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org