Bermuda Eradication/Expanded To Rough(As you have seen if you've played the course over the holiday)

I mentioned in video posts last week that we were expanding our Bermuda Eradication work to the rough with some newer herbicide chemistry called Pylex. Some might question why would you ugly up areas of the golf course like we have when the course was near perfect.

• First off, the club spent 1/4 million dollars to install Zoysia 20 years ago. We need to protect that investment. 

• We've spent well over $10k over the last few years spraying fairways, adding Zoysia and the labor required to install the new sod.

• The efforts on our fairways must extend into our first cut of rough because Bermuda wants to move into areas of least resistance. It will continue to try to push into fairways. We must push it back or at least keep it at bay. There is probably one grass more aggressive than Bermuda and its poa annua which is most adapted in shade.

• Bermuda grass is subjected to winter kill in our area about every 5 years or so. This damage leads to delayed green up of our fairways. Reduction of Bermuda in our first cut of rough is also important because of the difficulty in playing out of this grass in the late summer. The less Bermuda, the better playability and for our members and guests.

The last week of August I sprayed varied rates of a product called Pylex from BASF. The rates were from .25 oz/acre on bent grass collars/approaches to 1.5 oz/acre to our main rough. I used our large area spray unit on these areas to insure proper calibration and application. The white color of the leaves is caused by the disruption of chlorophyll production in the plant which gives the plant its green color. It has less activity on cool season grass but there is some activity. Also the secondary herbicide I used also has activity on the cool season. 

Parts of collars on 3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11,12,13,18 were sprayed. 

Rough was sprayed on 1,2,3,4,10,16-18. Bunkers/Green surrounds were sprayed on parts 4,5,7,9,10,11,12,13, and 18. 

This chemistry has serious activity on Zoysia as well which is a warm season grass. Greens collars such as 1-3 will require backpack applications in the next few days because of close proximity of Zoysia directly off the green. The rough was sprayed with an additional herbicide called Turflon which can reduce the amount of white discoloration caused by Pylex but it does have additional activity on the Bermuda and will turn it red. I've sprayed 6 acres of first cut rough and about 1 acre of collars, tees, and green surrounds. 

The rough areas I intend to drill seed Turf Type Fescue into these areas in the next couple of weeks to encourage additional cool season grass and discourage the Bermuda. I will expand the applications to additional rough in the next week to 10 days as well as other green surrounds. We do not have an unlimited supply of this material so don't fear, I will not spray the total course with this material.

This is an area near the dogleg of #1. This was a much lighter rate of Pylex that was applied without the Turflon added. Its having an effect but a slow one at that. You can see the Bermuda beginning to turn white.

This is an area on the right of #1 where I usually dilute and spray extra product out of my tank. You can see the green strip of no activity where I skipped an area in the rough. The cool season rough is tolerant of the spray but the mid-90 temperatures of this week has made its activity on the cool season turf a little more pronounced.

This is the area off the tee on 16 on the left. This is a 1/2  rate of Turflon. With warmer temperatures predicted, I decided to cut the rate in 1/2. More activity on the cool season grass than I wanted but it should calm down over the next few days with rain and cooler temperatures.

This is activity on the 2nd tee on some crabgrass which is cut at 6/10" about twice as tall as our collars. Pylex has activity on multiple grassy and broad leaf weeds which is an added benefit.

Goose grass on 2 tee. Great activity on goose grass.

This is the back of 5 green. The red is Bermuda grass. Most of the white on the right side is activity on the Fescue around this green but I expect this to come out in the next week or so.

This is activity on the right rough on the tennis court side of 18 near the right bunker. It has smacked the Bermuda in the mouth!

This is activity around the right bunker. This was sprayed without the Turflon material.

This is behind 18 green where we have some Bermuda as well.

Part of our Fairway eradication has involved sodding as well. This is over the hill on 10 about 125 yards from the green. Guys removing sod on Thursday and installing new.

In the same area installing new sod.

Removing old spots.

Additional spots waiting for more sod on Friday.

Repaired areas beginning the healing process. Did not remove every little spot of dead Bermuda. Expect the Zoysia to fill in the smaller areas by next season. If we spray and kill more Bermuda next to these areas and larger patches are showing, we will cut them out next season. 180 yards of new Zoysia in this area. 360 total yards laid this week. Well over 20 pallets of sod plus some removed from our nursery as well this season to repair treated and or winter killed Bermuda.

Cart Entrance to 7 Fairway, Bermuda Spray in Rough and , Caution! Construction Trucks On Property

Video below discusses the reasons for the rope across the right path along #7. Path is going to be removed this fall. It will be kept large enough for walkers but that is all.  All carts should use the left path in front of the red tee to enter along the fairway of Hole 7.

https://youtu.be/olrxkPQV6Xc





Our Bermuda eradication spray is beginning to show up in some of our rough. See the picture below.

The arrow on the left side is pointing away from the right of 12 green. This area was sprayed with a lighter rate of Pylex onto the collar and the first cut. You can see the darker green color.  The two arrows on the right shows the effects at full rate on the Bermuda after only 2 days. You will see this in a few  areas around greens and in some of our main rough. The left side of #11, around 13, 7, 10, 17 and 18.  Along fairways 1-4, 10, 16-18.

Mark Matteson who works for Clayco has located  some dirt for us to fill in the old tennis court area and for some other uses on the course. There will be some construction trucks delivering soil to the back parking lot and the long range. I expect this will begin next week but have not actually spoken with the hauler. We will also be using our dump truck to move the soil to the tennis courts during this time. I just wanted to warn you regarding these large trucks entering and exiting the property.

Fairways, A Work In Progress

Since 2009, I've been making efforts to reduce Bermuda contamination in our fairways. Some have questioned this practice and wonder why we should we do anything to them, they look great. If I was wanting to make life pretty simple for myself, I would just have the guys mow grass day in and day out. Play golf with members and couple times a week or maybe take a loop around other clubs in the area. Heck, why do anything except keep it green and keep it mowed. Sorry to say I'd quit if I was not allowed to attempt to make improvements to the property in the many ways we have over the last 7 years. I find improvement stimulating and at the same time challenging. I realize killing turf and not being able to repair it all at once is difficult for some. I don't necessarily like to see bare spots but as I've mentioned before, short term pain for some long term gain.

In the 1990's, the club made a decision to install zoysia at about  $ 250,000.  Bermuda contamination is probably at 25-30% and continues to increase. There are a number of reasons why we should make every effort to encourage zoysia.

• Zoysia is a superior playing surface and stays in better condition during dormancy which lengthens the golf season.
• Zoysia is more cold tolerant and not subject to winter kill like Bermuda which usually occurs every 5-10 years in St. Louis. 1991, 1995, 1999, 2005, 2013. How do you remember those dates? As a superintendent you remember the bad years.
• Zoysia allows the ball to sit up better than Bermuda.
• There are relatively lower cost combination of chemicals which does show positive results in Bermuda removal.. 

Specifically four fairways were chosen to begin our work because of their lack of Bermuda, Four, seven, off the tee on 8 and 13 were worked on over a couple of years in the beginning with good progress. We did take off in 2011 and 2012 because of green issues and severe heat/drought respectively in those two years. The Bermuda made gains back after no activity. In 2013 I did a few more spots and last fall I decided it was time to be pretty aggressive. We would never make any large scale gains if I did not get more aggressive. Along with about 10 acres spot sprayed last fall, I believe there were some Bermuda damaged from the cold we experienced in February which was actually colder than last February. The combination of our two sprays last fall  brought on some pretty significant loss. The staff has laid about 600 yards(5,400 sq/ft) of sod in the previous 3 weeks which is about the total area of 4 green. With the rain last weekend and our inability to mow any grass at all on Monday, I made a decision to do no sodding this week. We were behind in our mowing and trimming the course and our staff worked diligently over the last 4 days to get the course cleaned up. In my inspection around the course today I only saw a couple of holes that trees were not trimmed around. We have sodded areas on #5, 7, 12 and 15 as well as  the stump holes that were created in late April.

If the weather cooperates next week, I would expect to do another 2-3 pallets next week and each week until the areas have grown back in or we have replaced them.  We've been putting in about 40 man hours a week toward sod removal and replacement. I've been personally involved in marking areas. I know some of the areas are rather patchy that we are doing but the perimeter of many of the areas will fill back in. With the amount of Bermuda that we have if we did not allow them to fill back in we would have dirt for a long while until they grew back in or we had time to repair.

I do plan on hitting some areas with large patches of zoysia next week to knock back the Bermuda that is coming up through these spots. If I do not reduce this competition, all will be lost. Over the last 10-14 days there has been great improvement in some areas but I know there are still areas with no turf. Warm and humid nights that we experienced last weekend as well as this weekend will continue to improve these areas. We have not fertilized as of yet and will not do so until the patch disease has calmed itself down in the fairways. Once that takes place which is usually sometime after Memorial Day, we will give the warm season turf a shot of fertilizer. The combination of that and warmer soil temperatures will move the turf further along. As I told everyone in our committee meeting Wednesday night, I expect 99.9% of the fairways to be in perfect condition by Invitational Time the last week of June or sooner. Sorry to say because of shade and drainage issues, I would always expect to have some slight wear issues in heavily shaded tree corridors.

We intend to do some light aeration and slicing in June which should help to improve conditions and reduce stress.We will also perform some deep-tine aeration as well. This will be done in early to mid-June so as not to interfere with The Invitational. Feel free to stop me and talk about these efforts/ I painted most of the areas last week for the 2-man qualifier and ran out of time and used nearly 12 cans of paint. I don't like using 12 cans of paint, especially in marking fairways but we will see great progress in the next couple of weeks.

Fairway Bermuda Eradication Spray

Prepared a video regarding our 2nd Fairway Bermuda eradication spray this season which was completed on Sunday. Check it out below.

Fairway bermuda eradication program

(Editors Note, I apologize about the dark print on the body of the message.  I'm posting from home and having a conflict with my normal browser I use and having to work between two browsers.  I copied and pasted from one to the other and it did not transition properly)

Made a video today to discuss the fairway bermuda eradication program.The zoysia grass is coming out of dormancy and in some cases where I sprayed bermuda grass, the zoysia that was mixed in the area is a little slow in greening.  It is green but just not as green as the non-sprayed areas.  Areas such as #1 from above the fairway on the cart path and #3 from the tee show the outlines of some of the areas where the sprayer was turned on and turned off.  The video was taken from the flat area of #7.

We are using a combination of Fusilade II at 5 oz an acre and Turflon Ester at a rate up to 32 oz per acre which has shown in university trials to increase the efficacy of the products than using Fusilade on its own.   The zoysia is tolerant of these chemicals but can turn slightly off color during the application for the first couple of weeks. I would expect the remaining zoysia areas that are off color to be back to normal in the next couple of weeks.  I apoligize ahead but toward the end of the video I must have been covering the mike so the sound does go down slightly so you might need to make an adjustment in your volume.

Fairway Bermuda Eradication

The spray applied a couple of weeks ago on our fairways has started to show some results.  It has turned the bermuda off color and it is injured.  With frost right around the corner, the injury put on the bermuda as it is going into dormancy should severely stunt it as it tries to come out of dormancy next spring.  It will then be decision time based on how much zoysia is in the area if I spray it right away.  If the area is completely void of zoysia, spraying it again could take out the bermdua completely which would then force us to sod the dead areas which can get expensive.  If the area has zoysia in it, we might hit these spots again which will encourage the zoysia to grow because it has less competition and we continue to injure the bermuda.  One of the techniques we can use is to spray edges of bermuda which will allow the zoysia some advantage and it would be able to grow back into these spots.  Realize that bermuda can out grow zoysia by at least 3 times its growth rate.  Mr. David Stone CGCS from the Honors Course in Tennessee told me one time that you will probably never get rid of the bermuda completely.  Drainage areas/wet areas or areas that are too shaded will not support healthy zoysia.  Bermuda enjoys excess water and can handle shade better than zoysia.

I will also be spraying some areas of the rough with an application of our bermuda suppression material which should hurt it going into winter.  We will probably do a spray in the spring to reduce its growth in early summer which should make your summer golfing next season not quite as difficult if the bermuda is not as aggressive.  

This is the area on top of #10 looking back toward the lakes.    

The area to the right of the brown bermuda extending about 10' or so is part of the fairway and intermediate that is probably 100% bermuda.  I did not want to spray all this area at once because if it all went out, we would have to replace it with zoysia.  My hope is to injure the reddish brown area giving zoysia the chance to fill back into these areas.  We still might have to replace some zoysia but I am trying to keep it to a minimum.

This is the area at the bottom of #13.  You can see the areas effected from the spray.

Bermuda eradication update

I've got a video update of the bermuda eradication spray that was completed 9 days ago.  As explained in the past, this is a slow process.  The bermuda gets knocked back, in most cases it will begin to regrow.  The 2nd application in late September is the one that sets up for a potential kill over the winter.  We then have to follow up with a spray right at green up in April.  In some cases, it takes out the bermuda and we have to sod.  In other cases, there is enough zoysia there that will begin to fill in.  Below is a video I made this morning regarding this program.  For newer members who've not seen the program when we started it in 2010/11, the links below will take you to previous postings.

http://geccgcm.blogspot.com/search/label/Fairway%2Frough%20bermuda%20eradication%20program

Fairway bermuda eradication

With progress comes some pain from time to time.  The color of the turf is a brilliant green all over the property which is a little unusual for this time of the year.  I've just spent the past two days spraying some of the fairways with our bermuda eradication treatment.  The pretty green will fade in areas for a few weeks so we can begin the process over to remove the bermuda.  The plan is that the spray injures the bermuda if not kills it and the zoysia will then grown back up through and over the bermuda.  This is a slow process and will take a couple of years.  In areas of severe damage, we have gone in with zoysia sod and replaced these sections.

I've not sprayed our fairways to remove bermuda since the spring of 2011.  We were making nice progress for a couple years on holes 4, 7, 8, and 13 with spot spraying.  These four holes were are least contaminated holes.  High temperatures and drought conditions with very stressed zoysia turf last summer prevented applications last year. In the last day or so, I've spot sprayed almost 5 acres of material on holes 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 13, and 17.  I've also sprayed approaches on #1, 2, 6, 13, 17 and 18.  Over the next  7-10 days these patches will be evident from a yellow/reddening of the turf.  The zoysia will turn slightly off color but will rebound over the next few weeks.  The bermuda will continue to turn off color and its growth rate will be suppressed severely.  I plan to do a second application after the Echofest Member/Member Tournament which will set up the bermuda for some severe stress going into the fall and hopefully a death experience over the winter.  I tried not to spray areas that would require sodding zoysia but there is not guarantee of anything when you spray these materials.  The link below will take you back to past posts which explains the program in great detail.  As the zoysia/bermuda begins to show the effects of the material, I will make addtional posts with either pictures and or video to explain what is taking place with our turf.

    http://geccgcm.blogspot.com/search/label/Fairway%2Frough%20bermuda%20eradication%20program

Rough bermuda eradication/control

The fog and heavy dew this morning showed the great progress we are making with our first cut of rough and reducing the impacts of bermuda on the rough.  The bermuda has a great deal of leaf surface and the dew shows up and is more concentrated on it in comparison to zoysia or fescue. As shown along #16 a month ago, there is still some bermuda in the left half of the picture but it is has been tremendously reduced.  To the right of the flag pole is a solid patch of bermuda that was all the way across the picture to the fairway a couple of years ago.  As we improve our rough, we will begin to over seed with additional fescue out into the area to the right side of the picture.

Mostly fescue on the left with a solid patch of bermuda on  the right side of the picture.

Bermuda eradication program

As spring arrives, time for an update on our bermuda eradication program.  Google earth has updated their current maps to 4/9/2010.  This view of our course is great because it has captured our early season application of our bermuda eradication product mix.  Holes # 4, 7, 8, and 13 are receiving regular treatments and I did some spot applications on some other fairways.  Its interesting to see the reduction in contamination and how much bermuda is on our fairways so you can get an better understanding of what we are trying to eliminate.  We will do some spot spraying on the four fairways we have been working with in April upon green up and will spot spray one or two other fairways.  Last season, we had spots all over the course which took a considerable amount of time to go away.  This season, we will pick a couple of fairways other than the main four fairways.  This will limit the areas that are disrupted so that members, guests, and tournament players will realize that not all of the fairways are damaged or have issues. 

We normally make multiple applications during the season to our fairways but the heat from last summer placed too much stress on our greens which told me to call off killing anything else that was green in color.  Take a look at the satellite photos below to see how the program is working.    Click on the picture to enlarge.

#4 fairway

#7 fairway

Repairing damaged fariway areas

Some of our fairways had some winter damage from cold temperatures and drainage areas which stay wait and will freeze out the warm season turf.  Also, some spots were from the bermuda being killed  from our bermuda eradication program.  This past week after completing the tee work on #8, we had about 400 sq. ft of zoysia sod left from the project and also cut some sod from our zoysia fairway nursery area.  The guys replaced damaged areas on #8 and #3.  We have additional areas to repair on #4, 7, 8 and 15 which we will repair this next week.  I've delayed any additional bermuda spraying until after the Invitational which is coming up in less than 3 weeks.  The zoysia turf is tolerant to our spray but the chemicals do have some regulating affects on the zoysia and delay its growth.  Also temperatures in the mid to upper 90's could lead to additional injury of the zoysia which I did not want to risk.  Our spray in April had injured bermuda grass on multiple fairways so I have delayed making a follow up spray.  I intended to spray our 4 main fairways in the program in early June but the cool wet weather of mid-May delayed our growth coming out and then the hot weather kicked in in June.  Our membership has been very tolerant of the program but sometimes you have to chose green grass over brown and or dead grass. 

Russ, Tom and Jason picking up sod after it has been cut from our fairway nursery.

Repairs to #8 near the main road in which the bermuda was killed from our bermuda eradication program.  Also, there was some freeze damaged sod at the bottom of the north side of the road on #8 which you can see is now replaced with green sod.

The larger sodded areas are roped off and the smaller areas have white circles around them to remind you to take a free drop from the ground under repair area.  This also alerts you to not drive over these areas because we apply excessive water over the spots to keep the sod alive.

Fairway sod work

Beginning repairs on some zoysia areas of fairways.  Some of these areas have been killed by our bermuda eradication program and some of the spots in low drainage areas were damaged during the winter.

We will probably do a couple of fairway spots each week where we have damage.  #3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10,12,15.

An area on the right side of #13 intermediate that has died from our spray program.  We ran the sod cutter through the dead material.  The dead material in shoveled into a cart and hauled away.  Sod is cut from our range nursery and laid in the area.  The sod is watered heavily for a few days and we mark it as ground under repair with a white circle to alert our equipment operators and golf cart drivers of the location of the various repaired spots.  It will take about 10 days or so for the sod begin to heal and the roots to become active.  We then do some topdressing of the areas and fill the cracks in the sod with sand to improve playability and help the sod to fill in much faster.   

The picture below is on the left side of #13.  Pictured is our beast of a sod cutter.

I can't forget the cameo shot of 'Lady' every once in a while.

The completed removal of the old, dead material and laying of the new sod.

The single line of sod we did not put rope and stakes up but the double or triple row we put up some rope to protect the sod from being driven on or carts turning on the sod which can pull it up.

Sod replacement/bermuda eradication program

I spent the late afternoon/early evening out on the golf course marking some areas for zoysia sod replacement over the next few days/weeks.  Most of the areas were weakened by our bermuda eradication treatments over the past year but some areas were caused by cold weather we experienced this past winter. 

The picture below is along the right side intermediate of Hole #13.

We will be making some spot treatments of our bermuda eradication spray over the next week to reduce some bermuda encroachment of on holes #4, 7, 8 and 13 which are trying to regenerate from earlier applications.  These four holes have been in the program since the fall of 2008.  We will also do some spot treatment on some bermuda zoysia areas that have an abundance of zoysia in the spot so we are not facing large patches of dead and or dying turf going into the middle of summer.

Ty McClellan who is our USGA Mid-Continent agronomist sent out a letter regarding some zoysia decline he was seeing in the St. Louis area.  Most of this was occurring on public facilities that allow winter cart traffic but some of the information discussed also can applied to private clubs like Glen Echo.

Bermuda eradication program in first cut of rough

Asst. Mike was out spraying the first cut of rough around a majority of our fairways this morning to reduce the competitiveness of the bermuda grass and continue the process of pushing it further away from the main play areas of the course.  In some cases it was one pass and  in other areas it was two or more.  We basically were spraying between the cart path and a pass or two on the other side of the fairway.  If the area was heavily shaded, it was skipped because bermuda is not as competitive in the shade as it is in the full sun.
We sprayed about 10 acres of rough.  We are going to evaluate some of the areas between the tees and fairway for possilbe spraying in this program as well.

This spray will also kill broaleaf weeds such as knotweed, clover and dandelions which are prevelant on our golf course.

Asst. Mike  spraying between the bunker and approach on hole #18.

Fairway Bermuda grass eradication program

Assistant Mike made our first bermuda grass eradication spray of our fairways on Friday.  As you might remember, we have 4 fairways(4, parts of 7, 8 and all of 13) in our program.  We  have gone from full fairway applications to spot applications to help reduce the negative impacts on the zoysia.  Our sprays are made going into dormancy in the fall and coming out of dormancy in the spring which has the best chance to injure the bermuda.  The more severely it is  injured, the better opportunity for the zoysia to begin to get the upper hand and we rid a majority of the fairways of the bermuda grass.

Last fall, we sprayed an additional acre of spot spraying on all other fairways except #5.  We did not spray every spot of bermuda but enough to use one acre of spray.  This spring, we spot sprayed 2 acres of product on 4, 7, 8, and 13.  We sprayed another 3 acres over the remaining 11 fairways which increases our total acreage sprayed to about 5 acres.  We have 26 total acres of fairway.

Our plan as usual is to make the first application and then make a second application around May 10th.  We will evaluate the effects the first spray made and get a good idea of how much zoysia is actually present in some of the bermuda areas.  As we did last season, we will replace the worst spots of #4,7,8, 13 with zoysia sod from our nursery.  I don't think we have enough spray applications on other fairways that might warrant sod replacement but we will evaluate that situation as we move closer to the end of spring/beginning of summer.  As mentioned in last seasons postings regarding our program, there are some patches of bermuda that are just too large for us to completely kill all at once because of the cost to to replace the sod.  We will attempt to injure some of these areas to allow the zoysia to continue to move into the area.

Our second application will target areas where zoysia could have the opportunity to over take the bermuda grass.  As  we've seen in the last season, the zoysia will turn a little off color for about 10-14 days but will green up.  The bermuda that has only received one treatement, will turn very off color but usually becomes green again around 21 days after application.  For new members, go to the label section of the blog on the right hand column and click on bermuda eradication program and all the postings in the last year or more related to this program will appear.  This will give you additional details on our plans and will show pictures of the past spray programs and their affects on the turf.  Our goal is to get the fairways green again from chemical injury by mid-June and leave them alone until August where we will then begin our late summer/early fall spot applications.

We are also evaluating the use of another product which is much less expensive on our fairway nursery and the right side of #5 fairway.

Assistant Mike spot spraying #4 fairway.

Fairway Bermuda Eradication Program

We  have not started any treatments on our fairway bermuda eradication program this season but I wanted to show  you a couple of pictures of how our treatment program is working.  I expect if the weather cooperates over the next few days that we will make some spot applications on a majority of our fairways on the golf course.  We will also be doing some treatment in the first cut of the main rough areas  as well.

I saw a presentation in Kansas City over the winter by Mr. David Stone who is the superintendent at the Honors Club in Chatanooga, TN.  David is one of the most respected superintendent's in our business.  He has been involved with a great deal of testing of bermuda eradication products.  We are going to begin testing Fusilade II to potentially replace Acclaim Extra in our combination spray.  There was an issue with Fusilade used at this club a few years ago but it was an application error made by a contracted service.  The cost of this product versus the Acclaim plus the potentially less harm that the spray has on our zoysia are the reasons why we will be testing this product.  We will make some initial test applications on our nursery areas  and will keep you informed of the results.  Once we feel confident about the material, we will begin to move it into our regular rotation. 

The first picture is at the bottom of #7 fairway.  The top part of the picture is zoysia and the lower half of the picture is bermuda that has not been treated since we started the program in the fall of 2008.  The bermuda is very healthy and  is in need of a mowing it is growing so fast.

The picture below is of #4 fairway at about 200 yards or so off of the tee in the middle of the fairway.  This spot of bermuda is almost completely dead.  There are a few small hairs of bermuda trying to emerge.  This spot has probably been sprayed about four times since we started the program. 

There is a stark difference between the straw look of the bermuda in the bottom of the picture versus the healthy look of the bermuda in the top picture.

Fairway/rough bermuda eradication

In the last couple of weeks, we have made our last application of the bermuda eradication chemicals for the 2009 season. We have made our 5th application over 2 seasons on fairways 4, 7, 8, and 13. We also included our first cut of regular rough around all fairways and made applications to various tees to reduce the bermuda encroachment as well.(4/12, 6, 9, 11 blue, 13, 16, 17 and 18)

The green committee has been in discussions regarding additional applications to other fairways. Our concerns as a group are that the longer we wait to spray more fairways, the more severe the encroachment of the bermuda into our zoysia. Early this week, we made applications in spots on fairways 1-3, 10, 12, 15-18. These spots are smaller than the spot applications you will see in the pictures below from hole #13. We sprayed those areas at a reduced speed so that we would impact less zoysia turf. I also picked these spots because of the amount of zoysia turf in the spots which will help us with recovery of these areas. The spots will probably become visible to you in the next 5-7 days. The affects this season will probably be like the turf is going into dormancy which it is getting This application will probably not take out the bermuda but will reduce its vitality for next spring so that our zoysia will begin to move into some of these areas. We will also sod as needed in more severely affected areas. Additional applications will be made next season.

The picture below is of hole #13 with the application made about 10 days ago. The application was not made in total in the fairway but was spot sprayed to reduce the effects of the chemical on the non-bermuda areas of zoysia. Zoysia is tolerant to the chemical which means it will not be killed by the products but will yellow and will not be as vigorous during the first couple of weeks of application. We also sprayed the rough on the left side all the way to the cart path and on the right side about 30'. You can see some slight discoloration in these areas. Most areas of our first cut of rough were sprayed from cart path to about 30-40' on the opposite side of the fairway.

The next picture is from September 2008. During this application, we sprayed the entire fairway and the rough was sprayed with one of the two chemicals we were using. This application was made a couple of weeks earlier than the 2009 application which is why the rough is slightly more off color in last year's picture. We have made 3 applications on the rough on #13 and I believe we are beginning to make some very significant impact to this area. This view below is looking down 13 fairway and demonstrates the the effects that the material has on the zoysia and the bermuda. The zoysia turns off color/yellow and the bermuda turns red. As we continue to reduce the size of our bermuda contamination, the squares will be significantly reduced and our zoysia will fill in the voids left by the bermuda turf. The darker green turf in the fairway is where we did not spray the chemical mixture.

The picture below is from the most recent spray in 2009 on #13. You can see that the bermuda is very thin and soil is becoming exposed in the right side of the picture. The next picture is from September 2008 and you can see how strong the bermuda turf is and that there is no soil visible in this picture. Our applications are working and we are making progress as we attempt to push the bermuda out of our main play areas.

The last picture is between the forward tee on #11 and the fairway. The ride side of the picture is where we sprayed our bermuda eradication materials and to the left is rough that was not sprayed. We made two passes with our spray rig which covered 40'. We are seeding into these areas about 20' off of the fairways. As we continue to reduce the bermuda population, we will

expand the area of seeding over the next few years.