Recovered

The week was an absolute blessing following what we had encompassed during the prior week.  Warmth, sunshine, and wind helped dry the 5" of water received allowing us to recover with the grounds maintenance.  Our crew put in some long hours, in fact 3 straight 10 hour days to help get us closer to where we should be.  Lots of time was spent mowing rough and doing trim work around the golf course as the bluegrass had gotten a bit out of hand with the cool, wet weather. 

A great deal of people continue to express concern regarding the length and density of the rough.  I understand the concerns and we are trying something new to hopefully create a compromise.  What we are experimenting with is a "primary rough".  The "primary rough" will consist of 18 yards on each side of the fairway where the grass is mowed down to 2.25".  This will give those people who are barely missing the fairway not as much of a penalty as those that miss the fairway by a large amount.  For those that are largely off the fairway a penalty should be had and that is what the dense and longer rough does.  In all now there is a 36 yard cushion around the fairways to help with playability.

Other than mowing and bunker preparation this week we did tackle a few small projects.  With the amounts of rain that we received a great deal of drainage issues were exposed.  Throughout the week we were snaking drain lines to find breaks or plugs and we have been successful.  1st area addressed was a drain line through 13 fairway that heads towards 7.  This line is an old concrete line that had collapsed and was blocking the flow of water, I'm happy to say it is fixed and we'll see how it works during the next rain event.  2nd area addressed was along the left side of 3 fairway.  I know we all love trees, one thing with trees though is there are a great deal of hidden costs and complications associated with them.  One complication we find here at Briarwood very frequently is issues with roots in drain tiles.  Tree roots go to where they can get water and a drain line is a perfect spot.  Those roots get into the line and plug the tile, slowing or preventing the flow of water.  Here is a link to a tremendous article involving those hidden cost of trees: http://www.usga.org/uploadedFiles/USGAHome/course_care/green_section_record/2010/may_jun/cost_of_trees.pdf
Below are some pictures I took of the masses of roots we pulled from the tile along 3:

We still have a great deal of tile inspection to do and it will be an ongoing process through the rest of the season.  This fall I anticipate we will be doing some major repair to tile in as well as addition of new tile in areas.

Another task we took on this week was cleaning up along the left side of 13 fairway close to the green.  There are 2 Willows and 4 Honeylocust that are placed right along the edge of the fairway and create numerous complications not only with turf health but also playability.  Willows are great trees but they just destroy turf with great amounts of shade as well as taking moisture and nutrients away.  A few weeks back we did a great deal of seeding under these trees but the germination rate was very low.  In an effort to create a better environment for turf they needed to be raised up.  Along with the benefit of better turf health is the playability.  That area of fairway is sloped right towards those trees and a great deal of people can hit a tremendous shot but be penalized by rolling under the Willows where there was no grass and very low hanging limbs.  Now we should have corrected either of these downfalls.  Below are some pictures of before and after:

Early next week we will be doing sod work to finish up the task of cleaning up this area and making it more playable.

Again the week was great and it looks as though the weekend is shaping up nicely as well.  The golf course is looking tremendous and with the warmer weather the greens are starting to grow.  The fertilizer that we have put down is being absorbed and you can tell by the amount of clippings we're getting each morning.  One thing to remember though is with growth and green color comes slower greens speeds.  For awhile there everyone was saying the greens were rolling very fast, well that's when the turf was barely growing.  We will constantly monitor the weather to get an idea as to the stresses we can put on the greens.  When it is cooler we can pick speeds up but when it is warm we need to back off.  Just the "Nature of the Beast".  Enjoy the weekend!