Latest Membership Notice

We made it!  Cooler weather is here for the next few days, this will allow the turf to breathe as well as our Grounds staff.  It was a long hot week for everyone, but in the end we prevailed.  I can’t thank my Assistant’s, Moe and Nathan enough for all the hard work they put in this week along with everyone else on the Grounds staff.  Having 12 straight days of 90+ degrees and to end that streak with the last three being above 100 is remarkable.  Mother Nature threw us a battle and we came out on top! 

Extremely hot and humid weather is in the past for now, but yet we are still dealing with this drought.  Our moisture levels are substantially below where they should be at this time, this shortage traces back into winter.  Hopefully we will begin to see some shift in the moisture path and receive much needed “clean” rain.  Long range forecast unfortunately show no rain in the near future.  Our irrigation is keeping things alive but nothing is better than rain.  Rain flushes our soils of salt built up from our irrigation water helping making nutrients available for the plant.  Not only do we need the flush but a good ground soaker as the amount of water we are able to apply through irrigation barely puts a knick in the moisture deficit or even what is lost through the day due to evaporation.

I hope that most of you have noticed the way our greens made it through this stretch of weather.  Our maintenance practices were relaxed slightly to help the greens but they still showed great endurance and durability through the record breaking stretch.  I started to go through pictures from last year and came across a great photo of #7 green taken on July 5^th.  I decided it would be fitting to take the same photo from July 5^th this year and put them side by side for comparison.  Weather patterns were different between the years, with 2011 being the better.  Here are the photos:

 

These photos are a great comparison of what used to be and now what is.  The left photo illustrates the old Poa in the greens that when extremes came into play it began to shut down.  As much as I hate to say, but if our old greens were still in existence today we’d have some ugly looking and playing greens.  This goes to show that the investment Briarwood made has paid off in round one and will hopefully be the case for more rounds to come.  These new grasses showed a great deal of character through this past week, actually this past month.  We’re getting more and more comfortable with their abilities and what we can and can’t do with them.  Maintenance practices continue to be tweaked but I feel with what we witnessed this past week we can begin to push them a little more.  Again, we’ll remain cautious but try to stay away from the “overly” cautious side. 

In all the golf course has made it through this long week with flying colors.  I strongly feel that the practices like verticutting, deep tining, topdressing, routine aerification on these surfaces helped us pull through this week with minor blemishes.  Weeks like we just had helps show us where our really weak areas are that need to be addressed.  A list has been compiled of target areas that need extra TLC and cultural practices to make them more durable when extreme weather appears.  Some disease break through was noticed on Friday morning but only in rough which is never sprayed. 

In closing I’d like to touch on a few things that I’ve noticed throughout the week and I need your help:

1.)    Our rough is getting drier as the days go one.  Unfortunately not all the rough has irrigation available so there isn’t much we can do.  From now till further notice please try to keep the carts in the fairways as much as possible.  Constant traffic in the “browned-out, dormant” rough will end up killing it, requiring more inputs to get it to come back.  If we can stay off of it the rough will recover on its own when temperatures cool and rain finally falls.

2.)    Traffic control rope and stake are in place for a reason and that is to protect the turfgrass from being either damaged or damaged more.  Please go around areas that are either staked off or have signs directing carts to a direction.  I’ve been noticing a lot of areas where people are trying to squeeze the carts between stakes or like the picture just driving over them.  Another unfortunate finding is these “donut” makes in a lot of fairways.  Not sure who is abusing the privilege of cart use but this is unacceptable and shows complete disregard to the rest the membership.  We are trying our absolute best to produce a golf course for everyone to be very proud of and enjoy bringing guests, this only sets us back. 

3.)     Lastly I’ve been noticing a lot of “practicing divots”, especially close to greens where people are dropping multiple balls and hitting into the greens.  We request that for such practicing please use the short game facility.  The greens there are the same as on the course.  I know these are little things but if we had 180 of our members coming out and doing this how would the golf course look?

Again, another long notice I know, but I feel you can never have too much information.  We’ve almost hit the half way stretch in the “100 days”, time between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  I’m very happy with the conditions considering the weather and I strongly hope that we receive some rain here soon.  I hope that everyone stayed cool during this stretch of heat and hope to see you back out here on the course.

Best Regards,

Justin