Course Update and The Lady Open Pictures and Video

Between club championships, group events, outings, and some nice play days, a great deal has been happening on your grounds over the last couple of weeks.

Our last application of our Bermuda Eradication products took place on Wednesday on holes 1-12. Higher winds and play in the mid-morning time frame prevented me from spraying all 18 holes. They will be completed early next week. Along with our last application of spray, we will be raising the height on the fairway turf in the next couple of weeks as we prepare it for winter. I will be watching temperature forecasts and growth rate of the turf to determine when this will occur. The latest would be sometime around the first week of October.

The herbicide called Pylex we used on the rough is doing great work on some of the areas but will need to be applied again next week. We then intend to drill seed Turf-type Fescue into these areas to improve our cool season competition and give us better turf cover. We also need to make another application on our collars, approaches, and green/bunker surrounds. These late season applications will hopefully set up the Bermuda for some winter kill.

We have 5 cool season tees, 2,3,5,10 blue, 11 white and 14 left tee. We had a disaster in crabgrass management on a couple 5,11 and average at best on 2,3 and 10. We used our walking drill seeder and drilled rye grass into all the tees except 2/3 which have a mixture of bent grass and poa annua. The rye-grass should give us improved cover and has damaged the crabgrass. We will definitely be on top of getting these tees sprayed next season to eliminate this issue.

The 8th main tee has shown some improvement over the last few weeks. I deep-tine aerated it 4 times over the last month and we put about 300# of compost on it to improve it over all health. The aeration should help reduce its moisture level over the winter and improve its overall health. We might also close it down some this winter and move play up to the red tee just to reduce traffic. We do this on a number of our smaller tees to help reduce wear and tear when the turf is not growing.

Becky is in the process of replacing the verandah planters with Mums for this fall. It think the planters looked great this summer and added some contrast to this area and the clubhouse in total. We plan on putting some tulips in them for the spring to give some great color to the balcony as life begins to awaken from a long winter's nap.

We will also be evaluating the long range tee for wear and determining a closing date for it sometime in October. I continue to encourage those of you who like to practice to use the long line method of divot removal from the tee than completely clearing a 1 or 2' square area of turf. That spot will not grow back until at least next June if completely removed. We intend to finish placing the netting on the poles and shortening the poles to a  little under 30' before the end of October. Trying to close the range during the season and doing the work with all the other work was not realistic for our crew to manage.

Randy rolling the greens. What are the greens stimping is the question posed. Probably too fast for most of us.

As you may have noticed this past week, the best greens of the season should take place over the next 30 days as long as the rains don't get too heavy.We are looking at completing our deep aeration on the greens the week of October 19th or 26th depending upon weather conditions. This should give you at least 4 weeks of unencumbered joy on this lightning fast greens.(Yes my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek) Cooler temperatures, lower humidity, longer nights all contribute to great ball roll out and many challenges on our greens. We hope many of you take advantage of the next month. The battle of the leaves is usual at a smaller level until the end of October or early November anyway.

https://youtu.be/HIJsFu7QLio



We appreciate your support and look forward to seeing you out on the course. Lady had a great time at her pool party as did all the dogs that I could see. I'm sure there were some tired pups that night. She only had to growl down one youngster who was just showing her some love but was a little to rambunctious for her taste. After a tough day, the enthusiasm that our pets show to us can give us pause and comfort from the difficulties we sometimes experience during our work time.

https://youtu.be/eSHgYzRBQ08