Rinse and Repeat.

Have you ever seen the movie Ground Hog Day?  The premise was, Bill Murray's character keeps waking up in the same day.  I feel as though I'm living it.  It seems like each morning I wake up, I'm hitting my alarm then checking to see how much rain we received that night.  We've been stuck in a pattern now for the last 3 weeks.  Can't seem to string together a set of dry days and it's really becoming a headache.  Over the last 3 weeks we have averaged .26" of rain a day, that's not healthy.  Our evaporation rate has been .1" of moisture a day; leaving us .16" to the bad each day.  That adds up and has fueled our frustrations.  We are at a point now with our maintenance to the course where our priorities are finishing projects and increased mowing frequencies.  The weather really isn't allowing us to do so.  

On a bright side we are happy with the golf course conditions we have at hand, minus the constant saturated ground.  We make decisions each day to protect the golf course and prepare it for the long haul of the summer, not just for the day or weekend ahead.  This is a delicate time of year for the turf.  I often view the spring as the "training" session.  Similar to if you were to run a marathon; your not just gonna go out and run 26 miles.  You are going to train and build the endurance and strength of your body up to that distance.  Same with turf; we aren't coming out to put mid season turf conditions right in place.  We are going to train the turf by allowing it to grow stronger roots and build it's systems for the long haul of the season.  If we came out and looked to produce mid season conditions from the start we would see some pretty bad turf come mid July.  As much as we want to think; right here, right now, we have to think the long haul.

As we become more active and weather gets better there is the question of carts.  I know walking makes it a challenge for a number of our members.  Believe me; I want to get you out on the golf course.  Again, we have to think of long term.  Is making a mess of the course early in the season beneficial?  Are we overly cautious at this time of year?  Yes.  In do time things will swing the other way and we'll be able to accommodate the complete membership.  Thankfully the picture included is not Briarwood, but very well could be if we aren't cautious.

So, what are our hopes for the week?  First off some dry weather.  If we can accomplish that we'll see a good amount of mowing take place.  As mentioned above we are at a stand still with projects and eager to get complete.  We hope that by weeks end we have all stump holes from tree removals sodded over.  Drainage work on #1 is about wrapped up so we'll finish that and sod the trenches.  A big project we are eager to finish is the rebuild of 17 gold tee.  It's been sitting idle for some time now.  Probably a good 3-4 days and we'll be done.  Once we can wrap these up we can move to finishing the pond edge on #5 and finish with seeding of fescue grass areas.

I look forward to getting past this dreary pattern we are in.  Looking at the glass half full mentality; it is only April 16th.  Still have a lot of time ahead of us so patience will pay off, I'm always confident of that.