Bermuda Grass On Collars

Bermuda grass on our collars is a never ending battle. We gain in some areas and lose in other areas. Seeing the clumps of grass or runners are tempting to pull but the aftermath of your work on our greens is not good at best. The example below is what someone did on 17 green on Thursday. There is now a hole there that is 6" by 6" and will be there for the rest of the season.

I hate seeing the stuff as well but there are times of the year where we have to live with grass and weeds that are either in the wrong place or not controlled. Higher temperatures encourage weeds to be at their peak and our sensitive turf areas react negatively to chemicals during the heat.

Please refrain from pulling Bermuda grass that is attached to our greens and collars at this time. We will begin chemical treatments in a few weeks that we hope will reduce some of these issues. At this time of year, green is good no matter what kind of plant it is. 

Collar now damaged and pulled Bermuda grass left in place.

Great Couple days For Golf Etiquette 101

Sloppy conditions and 5 days from The Invitational calls for the better side of our members and the need for proper etiquette regarding repairing pitch marks, divots etc.

Very important to repair ball marks, step down your divots and place some sand on tee ground areas. Maybe take that scoop from your cart out to the middle of your fairway for a quick throw down of sand. We will try to get out and move tee markers mid day to reduce damage to our teeing grounds and will follow up in morning with sanding of tees and pitch mark repairs that were missed.

Your assistance to the players behind you I am sure will be appreciated as our playing surfaces appreciate your effort as well. 

A New Take On Ball Mark Repair

Turf Republic is a news source and information company that turf professionals like myself use. Their take on ball mark repair with a little help from Actor Shia LeBeouf

Leaf Patrol, Bridge work and foot prints in bunkers

After mowing greens this morning, part of the staff spent the rest of the day clearing a large amount of leaves that accumulate over the winter along our fence lines.  They hand rake and use backpacks to blow the leaves in rows so that another staff member with a tractor and vacuum can then come by and pick them up and haul them to our dump area.  They were able to get a large portion of #4 completed and started on part of #3 because the winds changed direction.  This normally takes 3-4 days to complete the entire perimeter of the fence line of the property.  If the leaves are not picked up, they will kill grass along the fence rows, make it difficult to locate a stray golf ball and can also be blown back into play areas when  the wind blows in the right direction.

Jason picking up the rows of leaves along 3 that Jeff, Randy, and Sam blew away from the fence.

Skip, Russ and Tom worked on the 15 bridge/spillway project today.  A couple of portable mixer loads of concrete were placed underneath the 15 bridge spillway to shore it up and stop the scouring of gravel from underneath the structure.  The guys mortared some cracks in the upper part of the spillway to reduce leakage underneath the structure.  We plan to place a new concrete roadway on the bridge, preferably a Monday in the next couple of weeks. Still have to talk with Skip about the concrete flume work that I originally had discussed.

Skip, Russ and Tom pouring the concrete through the hole cut in the lower spillway. You can see the boards in the foreground and background that were used to prevent the concrete from coming out from underneath the structure.

I sprayed greens today with our seed head suppression product that I discussed a couple of weeks ago.  The requirements of the application are that you spray it no later than 21 days after the first application.  I was 1 day on the back 9 and 2 days early on the front 9 but early is better than late. I was concerned with a potential report of rain overnight and with Men's Opening Day on Saturday, did not want to be late with the application.  It appears our application is working but we still have not reached the peak flush for seed heads which should occur in the next few weeks and last for at least a couple of weeks depending upon the weather.

During the spraying today, 17 green was one of my last greens to spray. I took a picture below of a bunker that was not raked.  What was most surprising to me was that all three bunkers appeared to be not raked and all had foot prints in them.  Please be aware that bunkers are not raked every day and if you leave your foot prints in a bunker, players behind you are potentially left with a difficult shot if their ball would fall into a foot print.  Please be considerate and rake the bunkers after you use them.  Interesting, a majority of the other bunkers were raked properly.

The right bunker on #17 that was not raked after balls were hit from it by what it appears to be at least two different foot prints.