Fairway verticutting

The weather over the last few weeks has been hot and dry. Our cool-season turf- the grass on the greens, collars, and rough- has had a difficult time surviving. However, these are prime conditions for the Bermuda grass. Stretched out over several days, we completed a full verticut of the fairways and approaches that wrapped up last week.

The verticut machine starting on #1 fairway

At this time of year, the Bermuda grass is reaching its maximum growth for the season. We are at the hottest part of the year, the humidity is high, and the overnight temperatures are elevated as well. Those are the conditions in which the Bermuda grass thrives, and this year has been even better than most.

Taking advantage of the excellent growing conditions, we dusted off our fairway verticut machine and started removing excess material from the fairways. It has been several years since we last verticut the fairways. First, much of the Bermuda grass was new sod laid during construction and was too new to aggressively remove material. Then, in the ensuing years, we struggled to get the maturing Bermuda grass to be thick and healthy enough to endure the verticut. We also dealt with turf loss after winter from spring dead spot and winter kill, especially after the winter of 2017-18, when we had to replace many acres of turf. That replacement turf then set us back to square one with working to get new grass to mature enough for verticutting.

By the end of last year, the Bermuda grass was ready for vertical mowing, but only by the end of the summer, which would have been too late. However, seeing the health of the turf, we were primed and ready to verticut this year if the fairways had a strong season. When the Bermuda grass came out of winter as strong as it did, and then so quickly progressed through spring, we planned the verticut.

From the middle of the picture to the left is healing after 1 week.
The right side is after 2 weeks.

Vertical mowing- verticutting- uses vertical blades that slice down into the turf canopy and soil. It is the exact same thing we do to greens in the spring and fall. Cutting down into the turf rips out stems and old, decaying material called thatch. It also cuts the new growth structures of the Bermuda grass- called stolons and rhizomes- and this leads to new growth. Opening the canopy allows air and water to penetrate the turf more easily. Removing some of the stems allows more space for the turf to grow and creates a tighter, denser playing surface. But most importantly, the verticutting removes thatch from the Bermuda grass. We manage thatch for several reasons, but the biggest reason is that too much thatch can increase the likelihood and severity of spring dead spot.

This shows recovery after 3 weeks

Verticutting the fairways is a slow process, with an average sized par-4 hole taking 45 minutes to an hour to complete. Once the machine is finished, we come back through and blow the fairway, moving the material out into the rough. Lastly, we will mow the fairway to trim down all the grass that is standing up. Over the next few days, we will continually mow and blow the fairway until it is back in shape. Healing from the verticut takes about 7-10 days.

Visually, verticutting the fairways can seem too aggressive. Plant material is flying out and the grass is being ripped apart. But the overall benefits far outweigh the downside to the work, and we had the perfect weather to complete the job this July.

 

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please do not apply any spray sunscreen or insect repellent while standing on the grass, especially the greens. The chemicals kill the turf.

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

Golf Cart tips

 

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Turf loss

The weather impacts the turfgrass more than any other single factor. Unfortunately, the very hot stretch of weather last week was very stressful for all the cool-season grass, and too stressful for some particular spots of turf.

The weather dictates what maintenance we can and cannot do, as well as the health of the turf. Sometimes we can do everything right and Mother Nature can still win. We always strive to keep all the turf alive across the property, but last week we failed. The 3-day stretch all over 100 degrees was simply too hot for some of the grass. Coupled with slightly less water than the turf needed, and the plants died within a few hours. No excuses, we did not do the things we needed to do to keep the grass alive.

So, what is next? Most of the grass will eventually heal or fill back in with healthy turf. The downside is that this will take time. Part of the reason the grass died in the first place is because the environmental conditions have been so difficult for growth. Although the temperatures have dropped some, in general, the weather is still not conducive for good, cool-season turf growth, which means it is an uphill climb to get recovery.

The areas that don’t heal will be reseeded. Again, this will have to wait a few weeks also. We are just over two weeks away from aeration and it would be counter-productive to put new seed in the ground just before we start aerating and potentially damage the new seedlings. Two-plus weeks further into the year will also mean 1-2 degrees lower average temperatures, likely a few cooler nights mixed in, and shorter days, which all will benefit healing turf and new seed.

Patience is the key, which is very hard for us. Our goal is to have the course in as good a shape as possible, every day, and dead turf is very difficult to endure. We are not using the weather as an excuse, but there is no doubt it played an outsized role in the turfgrass decline. Nevertheless, we can’t change the weather or what happened, but we will continue to work diligently to preserve the turf that is still viable, and work to improve the subpar areas as quickly as possible and get the course back up to our standards.

 

 

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please do not apply any spray sunscreen or insect repellent while standing on the grass, especially the greens. The chemicals kill the turf.

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

Golf Cart tips

 

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

USGA Course Consulting visit

We welcomed our regional USGA Agronomist for a course visit in mid-June. The USGA provides this service for guidance and perspective from a professional agronomist to help if we are having problems or to help further reinforce programs that are working. Lucky for us, our visit was just a general overview, not regarding a specific trouble issue.

Our last USGA visit was back in 2022. You can read that report here. Unlike the visit in 2022, we did not have a certain main topic. Instead, we toured the course looking at a few different difficult spots- things that a golfer might notice, but not necessarily understand the root cause. The USGA Agronomist is helpful in these situations because they can provide further detail, can possibly explain better the certain reasons behind an issue, or simply reiterate that they agree with the initial assessment and reinforce that idea.

The USGA Green Section supports Golf Course Superintendents tremendously. We use site visits as a tool for communicating with the membership about some of the things that are happening on the golf course, and it was productive again this year.

Below is the link to this year’s report:

USGA report

 

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please do not apply any spray sunscreen or insect repellent while standing on the grass, especially the greens. The chemicals kill the turf.

 

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

Golf Cart tips

 

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Repositioning a drain

We continue to dodge any pop-up thunderstorms and remain very dry. Nevertheless, in our irrigated areas, sometimes wet spots can develop. We addressed one wet area this past week.

On the right side of #5 approach, the drain from the right greenside bunker terminates in the rough. This is a typical setup for the ends of bunker drains- they don’t often tie into other drainage; they just stop a fair distance away from the bunker and empty into the rough. Under normal circumstances, emptying the bunker drain like this does not cause any issues.

It may seem strange to be working on a drain during such a dry stretch. However, controlling and moving water is the most critical aspect of maintaining good turfgrass. And there are two specific times when water can be a problem- very wet seasons, or very dry seasons. The need to move water off the turf in a wet season is obvious. But in a dry season, relying so heavily on irrigation inevitably leads to overly wet areas simply due to inconsistencies in irrigation distribution and heavy usage. This whole season hasn’t been dry, but we are in a very dry, and intensely hot stretch right now and we are maintaining the turf solely on irrigation.

Bunkers also get watered because of their location. The green and green surround sprinklers both get water into the bunkers every time they run. In the case of #5, that is where the excess water is coming from- the volume and frequency of watering the green and surround leads to more water in the bunker and thus more water moving through the drain system.

So back to our project- the extra water coming out of the drain had created a significantly wet spot in a location that was affecting our mowing and playability. Our mowers either had to avoid the spot entirely, or if they mistakenly mowed through it, would create a muddy mess. So, our goal was to take the end of the drain and extend it out towards the cart path. In that location, our mowers could much more easily avoid it, it would be less impactful to golfers, and the excess water could empty onto the cart path rather than into the middle of the rough. We only had to stretch the drain another 15 feet and cover it right back up; we finished in one afternoon.

It was a small project, and one that won’t really get a lot of attention. But making lots of small improvements raises the level of the entire property. That was the goal with repositioning the drain on #5.

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please do not apply any spray sunscreen or insect repellent while standing on the grass, especially the greens. The chemicals kill the turf.

 

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

Golf Cart tips

 

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Another dry June

The last month has been dry. Last year was dry through this stretch of the season as well. The difference this year though has been how hot it has been also. The two factors combined have led to the very droughty conditions on the course.

Since June 13^th we have had 14 days of 90+ degrees, including a stretch of 7 in a row. On top of that, we also had several upper 80-degree days with low humidity and wind. All these conditions are very conducive to the loss of water. Coupled with no rain and the course gets very dry.

Water is lost from the soil by evaporation and the plant loses water though transpiration, which is its way of cooling itself. We have a fancy metric for this called evapotranspiration, or ET, which helps us calibrate how much water the plant lost and how much we need to replace to keep it alive and healthy. Generally, cool season turf- the grass that is in the rough and on the greens- needs about 60% replacement of ET to stay alive and between 60-80% replacement to be healthy. Several of the days over the last month have had an ET loss of .25” and a handful were .3”. This means that even to replace at 60% we would need to apply about .15” of water, or the equivalent of running every sprinkler for 15-20 minutes each! Every day!

Obviously, we can’t do that: 1. We would run out of water in about a week; 2. Not every single plant needs exactly that much water returned- some plants with stronger roots can last longer than others;   3. Running the sprinklers that much would cause extremely wet areas. So we strategically run certain sprinklers. Or we use hoses to spot water specific areas. Nevertheless, inconsistencies are unavoidable. Areas will get too wet, other areas will get too dry.

None of this considers the Bermuda grass either. Although the water requirements of the Bermuda grass are much lower, it is not invincible, and needs water too. The dry tee surfaces, and localized spots in fairways are an indication of how dry even the Bermuda grass has gotten.

No irrigation system is a replacement for rain. No system can evenly water a course the way rain can cover the property. However, an old system such as ours can show even more inconsistencies across the course and a stretch of weather like we are in right now makes that even more apparent.

 

 

 

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please do not apply any spray sunscreen or insect repellent while standing on the grass, especially the greens. The chemicals kill the turf.

 

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

Golf Cart tips

 

 

 

 

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org