First mowings of the season

Last Friday we started to walk mow our greens. We normally use 3 to 4 units each day to complete this operation. This operation will take approximately 8-9 hours of labor a day depending upon the number of operators, the direction of mowing and if we are doing a clean up cut or circle cut.(Circle cut is when the mower will go around the perimeter of the green, tee or fairway that they are mowing and mow some of the grass which they cannot cut near the edge of the area.)

Assistant Mike Walerius is going after the 4th green last week.

We attempt to walk mow as often as we can based on what cultural practices we are doing to the greens on a particular day. Sometimes we will walk mow and use our riding unit and roll greens which help with smoothing the surface and can speed up the greens for a day to two days. During our topdressing operations, we will also use a riding unit. The riding unit reels are larger and stronger than the walking unit and can be ground many more times than a walking unit. We have a grinding unit at our shop which sharpens the reels. Regular sand applications cause the reels to become scarred and cut the turf irregularly. These irregularities create weakness in the plant which can lead to disease and or damaged turf. It can also affect the roll of the ball because the turf is inconsistently cut. With our heavy sand applications, we keep Harry White our mechanic very busy with setting up the cutting units on a daily basis.

Today, we started to mow some of our fairways. While carts are still on paths, I will not usually attempt to mow fairways but there were a number of fairways which were pretty long from their winter rest and were beginning to grow and they were dry enough to not cause damage. There are a number of fairways which we cannot mow right now including 1, 3, 12, and the lower part of 13. Since our zoysia is beginning to green up and grow, we will begin to allow carts off of paths as the fairways are dry enough to allow cart traffic.

Russ is putting the first cut on #2 fairway.

Yours truly is doing the perimeter cut around fairways and walk paths from tees to fairways. Not a lot of grass around the fairways but some cool season grass to mow through in the rough for the walk paths.