Course Closed Through Saturday, February 2nd

The golf course will remain closed through Saturday, February 2nd. We will evaluate Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning to see if conditions allow for opening on Sunday. The Driving Range will be open to come out and hit some balls during the weekend. I've been in contact with others clubs in town and some are closed and a few others are open but are on temporary greens.

 I've posted 3 videos below which show our situation on various greens throughout the grounds as of 1 PM Friday.

Practice Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wALqJIslxQ&t=9s

7 Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WxC5nX7tUc

11 Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKX3abCg2B0

A Big Blast From the North and the Impending Thaw, How That Effects Golf Green Health

We've had above normal temperatures for the most part during the first 28 days of January with nights being well above normal and day temperatures a couple degrees above. This next blast of cold air the last four days of this month will bring our temperatures closer to average.

I'm sure everyone is anticipating the impending cold that will be followed by a warm up in the forecast below. I believe we have a 1 in 4 chance getting the course open this weekend.

Before we get too excited for a potential course opening this weekend, allow me a moment to discuss the yearly freeze/thaw issue that takes place with our greens.

We are getting to the time of year, probably a month or less before our first mowing of the winter/spring season. With cold temperatures like we will be experiencing over the next few days and no snow cover, the freeze is going to move pretty deep into our sand layer of our greens. The greens need to thaw at least 2-3" and the top of the green surface must be free of significant moisture.

Consequences of Greens Not Being Thawed Deep Enough

As the greens begin to thaw just an inch or two, the thawed part of the green can shift from golfers walking causing the area where the thaw and freeze meet to break or shear the roots off. Our roots this time of year are about 4" deep on average.  

Reducing the length of the roots forces the plant to regenerate new roots in the spring forcing it to catch up with non-damaged plants. Roots not damaged are growing deeper and branching more which  contributes to a healthier plant throughout the spring  and into the summer. The damaged plants see a total surface area of the roots reduced from this damage. The damaged plants must play catch up the rest of the spring and into the summer. If summer conditions arrive early like they did last year, there is less growth potential available for recovering plants and no storage of excess energy. 

The more total area of rooting the plant has, the more energy and moisture they can absorb throughout the spring and into the summer. Usually excess energy is produced and the plants can store some of this excess energy within the plant. The plants store this energy for use during the summer when growth slows and photosynthesis does not produce enough energy to maintain a healthy plant. The longer the plant has energy, the better it can ward off the severe stresses of our 

St. Louis summers. 

Consequences of Water Near the Surface

If the greens have not thawed deep enough to allow the moisture to move through the profile, the greens become spongy and very soft. During late winter play, if we allow play on greens that are very soft and spongy, foot traffic imprints into the surface of the green and may take a couple of weeks for it to come out. This condition can also contribute to large ball marks and damage from just walking on the green. There is also some potential for equipment potentially scalping the surface if this thaw occurs closer to the end of February. We always try to roll our greens in early spring in an effort to reduce the potential for scalping from puffiness and or foot imprinting.

The staff will be monitoring our surfaces and will alert the pro shop when play will be allowed on the golf course including the practice green. For those of you who like odds, I would place our chances of opening at 25%.

The staff has spent the last few days splitting wood, cleaning up tee markers, refurbishing some tables for Golf Pro Mike, cart maintenance, and checking out the internal workings of the ball washers. I've attached a few pictures of their work below.

Sanded and stained but not quite finished.

Shiny and new!

3 Tables in all were refurbished.

Sanding of old material from tee markers

Beginning the coating process.

The walk on area from the pro shop to the practice green was renovated
this past fall. We prepared a little taller stake to attach our nylon rope which will
 allow us to rotate the entrance and exit area from the practice green. Proper
 water, soil structure, aeration, rotating the wear pattern and removing the large sweet
gum should  help improve this area tremendously.

Guts pulled out of the ball washers and being cleaned. Washers were professionally
repainted 4 years ago and look like new  to this day.

Cleaning up the chairs next to the practice green.

Plans for 2 Tee Renovation

Over the next few months, we will be renovating the 2nd tee at Glen Echo. There are a number of issues with this tee that need to be addressed.

1.  It's alignment is pointed down the right side of the hole which makes it extremely difficult because as you know the hole slopes significantly from left to right. 

   

   Red arrow shows existing line of the tee. Green arrows shows the approximate direction the tee will be pointed.
   
   

1. The tee surface is cool season grass which creates more inputs of resources; water, fertilizer and fungicides.
2. It is at grade which allows water from above it to over run it causing less than ideal softness during rainy periods.
3. It is much larger than necessary for our amount of play the course receives. This also takes more time in maintaining.

The plan is to turn the one long tee into 2 tees similar to what we did on #5 last spring. There will be a swale between the 2 tees to allow water to go around the tees and the tees will be pointed in the proper alignment.

The staff will be removing the front part of the tee which is currently covered in zoysia. Approximately 10-15 yards. This tee height zoysia will be cut off and used to replace the false bent grass front on #7, #10, and #13 until it is gone. The bent grass sod will be used to replace sections of collars that are damaged.

We will strip off the top 6-8 inches of soil and save it to cap the new tee services raising the level of the tees-6-8" so that it will be above the cart path next to the tee helping to move the water around the tee. We will of course strip off the remaining sod on the tee service and dispose of it.  Once we've stripped off the zoysia and removed the growing layer of soil, we will then remove the remaining soil. 

We intend to expand the blue tee back about 10 yards or so and will have to expand out the right side of the two new tees which will help us align the tees properly and also make them slightly wider. We will make the egress to the tees simple for our players and easy to access. The surrounds of the tee will be laid in fescue which will give great contrast to the new tee.

The pics below are a general idea of our plans. Ultimately we will have two tees approximately 17-20 yards in length and about 8 yards wide. We will be removing some of the scrub trees or pruning along the metro side to assist with afternoon sunshine for the zoysia grass. I mentioned to the green committee that the first Pin Oak on the left side of the tee has become compromised and appears it will expire in the next year. The 2nd tree appears to be in good shape and should not create any issues for the tee. It's limbs have been raised high enough to allow early day sun.

The tee should be completed by early April and will be open for play we hope by early May. There is a winter tee that is above the 2 large pin oaks about 40' from the existing tee that will be used once the renovation begins.

Okay, better quit for now. Gotta go get some bread, milk and eggs for the upcoming snow apocalypse!

White tee

Blue Tee

Winter Play

Made a quick video on the course regarding winter play and our teeing grounds and 2 hole locations. We remove the tee markers for winter play to refurbish the markers and help spread the wear and tear to our tees. We ask that you tee it up on the edges, front or back of the tee and limit use of the middle. The tuf is not growing and middle of the tees has heavy usage during the season. This will insure that our tees have equal wear and will come out ofwibter ingoid condition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ2AprB24hE

We also will place 2 holes in every green to help spread out wear in case the greens freeze and we cannot change the holes. I would expect that we will change to 2 holes later this week since staff will be taking time off during the holiday season. We will place a sign at the first tee notifying you when 2 holes are being used. We ask groups to rotate the flag to the 2nd hole once your group has completed the hole. The holes are usually placed on the left and right side or front and back depending upon the green.

Tree Management Plan

This past season was a most difficult one for the trees on our property. Oak gall wasp, roller coaster of temperatures and moisture over the last 10 years with record all-time high temperatures and rainfall. Also, one thing to keep in mind a number of our trees were planted in the 40's to 60's which make them range in ages from 60 - 80 years. 

We have about 20-25 trees of all sizes to remove this winter. From green ash, locust and a large number of Pin Oak plus a couple of other red oak species who haven been under tremendous decline over the last few years. In most cases, these trees are in areas or groups of trees and are not strategic such as protecting doglegs. We do have an area along the left of #1 where we lost a couple of trees that need replacement and we hope to get a couple moved in this area over the next week or two. There are a number of other large trees that have showed some distress this season and will probably die over the next few years. Just like grass plants come and go, so do our trees.

We attempt to remove trees without a contractor unless they are too tall. Once we determine that we need the contractor, we call them in for a day and they remove tops on some of the largest removals that we need assistance in dropping. This might only occur once or twice a year. Our staff saves a tremendous amount of resources doing a majority of this work.

We like to prune limbs off of trees because of the close proximity of other trees that we do not want to damage as well as the protection of valuable turf areas. I also like to take the weight off of the tree so we can direct into exactly where we want it to fall. Trees can twist and turn without warning. We are also not aware how strong or condition of the trunk in case it possibly would snap as the weight begins to move one direction or the other.

We rented a lift for a week in an effort to drop as many limbs as possible. We chip the limbs in our dump truck and save the mulch for the range walk paths and other areas on the course where they can used. We are trying to do as many as we can over a weeks time to manage our resources. We haul off the larger limbs to areas around the maintenance building where we split the good Oak for firewood. We burn significant amounts of wood in our wood burner to heat our maintenance building. We save a minimum of $ 2,500 in natural gas expense over the winter. We will then remove the large trunks after the holiday break which will take a few weeks.

We have a small crew and it takes a significant amount of effort to remove the brush, limbs and log the trunks. .

In discussions with the green committee this fall, I talked about developing a plan to replace strategic trees as necessary but to not get into a large scale tree replacement program. We have a difficult time with managing our resources when it comes to the trees on our property. The shear size of these trees on an overall small piece of property is very difficult at best to manage. It is important that we conserve resources such as water, fertilizer and the total cost in tree management. Blowing, raking, mulching and grinding and mulching and grinding some more.

Our most important asset that we have at Glen Echo is the turf grass that provides the playing surfaces for our great game.   

Below is video of Gamma Tree removing the Sweet Gum next to the Pro Shop and practice green. I'm in awe of the work these guys perform. You learn to have a great appreciation for their work when you go up 40-50' doing the lower level work that we do. The removal of this tree will help to keep the practice green/cart parking area and ornamental plantings free of gum balls, leaf litter and other debris.

There are trees near 8 green partially removed (locust), Pin Oak right rough 16 230 yards from the green partially removed and another which has a large part of the crown of the tree exposed about 185 yards from the green that we have not trimmed yet but must be removed. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm7i3ISEv1Y

Contractor from Gamma working on the pro shop tree.

 

4 left side of the path about 50 yards before the cross path to the field bar at 7. Tree died over the summer.

11 top of the hill right side of the cart path at start of fairway. Had significant decay.

Today's look at the pro shop after removal of the sweet gum.

#18 right side of the fairway about 230 from the green. Oak died over the summer.

This tree was about 30 yards behind the tree above in the middle of 17/18 rough. 

This oak is to the left of the cart path on 2 near the green irrigation box 225 yards to 2 green. Died over the summer. There is another oak in significant decline up near the left tee on 16 which is in the same row of trees. I pruned it the best I could to make it look a little better for this season.

Oak chips used for walk paths and other needs on the course and of course the logs from the limbs only. We still have to cut the main trunks down.

Bunker Repair and End of Season Greens Spray

Our bunkers have gone through their 6th season and are in need of some repair. Most of the entrances and exits have some wear and tear issues from both equipment and efforts to keep them clear of debris. We spent most of the day on Friday reparing the left front bunker of #5.

The first thing we had to do was remove the sod along the edge to locate the actual edges of the bunker. We had to remove the excess sand that has been either blown out or drug out by our bunker rake.

We took the sod off and scraped the sand down to the soil layer and dug down along the sand until we found the original bunker edge that was done in 2012.

Once this was completed, we then laid new fescue sod and then moved the sand up against the new sod to assist in stabilizing the bunker edge over the next few months. In some cases, we will need to remove sod from the green splash side of a bunker as well. We will attempt to complete a bunker a week until sod cannot be cut from our supplier and will then begin again in late winter/spring hopefully completing most of the problem areas before spring has fully arrived. We will of course be checking sand depths and adding sand as needed as well to insure we have proper depths for our members and guests to play.

Some of you might have noticed the greens were pretty bright in color over the weekend. No, not a lot of growth taking place. We sprayed a fungicide called Civitas 
which has some late season benefits as well as early season benefits for 2019. Click on the link if you want to read more about it.

Right front edge of the #5 first bunker on the left

Arrows designate the edge of the bunker. We stripped off the sod from the tip up the arrow back up the slope. Sand hand been pushed up over the actual bunker edge so we dug down into the sand bank to find the original edge of the bunker Kyle Goalby had originally shaped.

Sand/soil mix being removed from the dge

Repaired edge with new sod. 

Sprayed the greens late last week with a fungicide which delays fall/winter dormancy and should assist in spring green up. Yes think spring!

Man Its Cold Outside(Weather Stats for November)

The ugly weather stats for November. The course was closed 9 days in November with 6 other opened days where the avg high temperature was 39 degrees so far all practical purposed closed 15 of 26 available days that we could have been open.

TEMPERATURES
                                  Observed          Normal   Depart      Last Year
                                                              Value        from
                                                                             Normal

Avg Maximum               46.2                55.5        -9.3               58.2
Avg Minimum                31.4                38.1        -6.7               38.0
Mean                               38.8                46.8        -8.0               48.1


RAINFALL

                                          2.74                3.91      -1.17              1.53

TIED 6TH COLDEST NOVEMBER ON RECORD (38.8 DEGREES).

TIED 4TH MOST OCCURRENCES WITH A MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE LESS THAN 60 DEGREES (27 DAYS).

TIED 3RD MOST OCCURRENCES WITH A MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE LESS THAN 40 DEGREES (10 DAYS).

TIED 8TH SNOWIEST NOVEMBER ON RECORD (5.2 INCHES).

TIED MOST OCCURRENCES WITH AT LEAST ONE INCH OF SNOWFALL (3 DAYS).

...DAILY...

1 LOW TEMPERATURE RECORD TIED (18 DEGREES ON 11/10, ALSO SET IN 1973).

4 SNOWFALL RECORDS SET OR TIED (11/15, 11/12, 11/09, 11/08).