Our Day!

Unfortunately the course is completely closed today.  Today is "OUR DAY".  We felt the need to close the course to 1.) Give it a break after the long, hot weekend but 2.) Needing to get prepared for Mens Guest Day tomorrow.  The weekend was long with some gorgeous weather.  Finally felt like summer out there for a change.  The hot and dry weather does have our predominantly Poa greens raising their ugly head.  These are the times where the Poa starts to try and shut down.  Poa is a cool season turf which is very intolerant of hot weather.  Our staff was busy throughout the weekend doing hand watering in the afternoon to help protect the Poa.  Hand watering is a task of lightly misting the greens surface to cool it down, with adding a little more water to areas that are showing drought conditions.  Below is a few photos of the Poa showing stress:

Here is a picture of 5 green.  The dark green is the bentgrass and the lightish green is the Poa.  As you can see the percentage is largely Poa.  When the Poa turns this color it is beginning to show stress, mainly from the higher temperatures.  Notice how the bent isn't even phased!  Now can you visualize having 18 greens with pure bent, a little heat doesn't do any harm.

5 Green was showing the most stress over the weekend so we carried out a few cultural practices this morning to help get more moisture into the profile of the green.  Tasks carried out were solid tine aerification to open up small holes about 5" deep to allow water to get down.  Second we then watered the green by hand with a "Wetting Agent".  Wetting agents help keep water up closer to the surface rather than letting it penetrate all the way down past where the roots need the water to be.  Here is a video showing the aerifier at work:



Other than 5 things are holding up pretty well.  A few other spots have lit up but we are attacking them through hand watering methods and utilizing wetting agents. 

I enjoyed riding through the course taking some pictures this morning of nature.  I found the little fawn and it's mother playing by to pond on 14:

An then the view from 12 green to 8 green.  Day Lilly's are blooming and the Wildflowers are in full color!

Then just a picture of 12 from behind the green:

Like I said previously, today is a long day for us trying to get caught up and prepared at the same time.  Men's Guest Day is tomorrow and lots to accomplish to have a very presentable place for Members and their Guests.  The staff is on property till dark tonight trying to accomplish as much as we can, then we'll finish up tomorrow before the 12:30 shotgun.  We also continue to cleanup storm damage.  Nels Johnson is here again today cleaning up some more trees that were severely damaged during the storms over the last few weeks as well as removing a few Elms that are infected with Dutch Elm disease. 

I apologize for the delay in posts, been a very busy last few weeks.  Hope this is working as a great communication tool for you to know what's taking place on our end of the operation.