Invitational Practice Round, Inside 12 days now!

Preparations continue for 'The Invitational' Member Guest Tournament and of course our regular play.  Fine tuning will be taking place over the next week and a half.  Cleaning and sprucing up the facility is always ongoing but its pace is a little quicker leading up to this event.  All the pots have been filled with plants, beds are all but complete,  I've addressed the size of this year's plants in an earlier post but a little heat will begin to move everything in a better direction.  Weeding, mulch touch up and some fine tuning will take place.  Divot filling on tees, small patches of worn areas in fairways, stump grinding, tree trimming, cleaning all course accessory equipment are just a few of the things that staff will be accomplishing.  Topdressing of greens and brushing this week should give us great surfaces for putting next week.  Continued sprays and nutritional applications are being made to keep our turf healthy and able to respond to adverse conditions.  Hearing putting conditions were good this weekend for The Clarkson Championship which I believe had a tie that was broken in sudden death with Mr. Coe winning and Mr Lockhart taking 2nd.

The short range targets have taken root and the bermuda should begin to spread this week with some heat coming on. We will get the poles up this week for the targets.  We plan to have 3 signs placed on the left, back middle and right side to identify the distance of each target to assist you with your club selections.  The yardages should be from about 35 to 100 yards depending upon which area of the tee you are set up for that day.

Weed control in fairways and tees was applied on the back 9 on Friday and I hope to get the front 9 sprayed Monday.  Already see some good curling of knotweed and clover.  I sprayed a few hand sprayer containers of Nutsedge/Kylinga spray in fairways and tees today ahead of tournament spray. Still have about 3 holes to go.  We will be applying our wetting product to the bunkers which should assist us with keeping the bunkers a little firmer.  Extra moisture of course will have to be applied to the surrounds which will add to the moisture already in the bunkers.

Soil penetrants and wetting agents will be applied to our tees, green surrounds to assist in water retention and or moving through the profile more easily.

We will be applying a light amount of fertilizer to the rough.  Yes, I know it is lush and tough to play from but we can see some changes in its color over the last 7-10 days.  We do a light fertilization at the beginning of summer to help provide it with just a little more energy for the next couple of months of heat.

We will continue to keep you updated on our progress.

Jason shearing the Euonymus hedge behind 7 tee/8 green