September, last course closure of the year

October is almost here & to be honest, I'm glad! I can't wait to see everyone back enjoying the course again. This summer is officially the hottest summer on record that we have had in a long while and let me tell you...it has been a long, hot, humid, sweaty summer. Despite the heat, we have managed to accomplish all of the summer goals, and then some. Having the course closed for a week was a huge success and I just want to say thank you to the Club for do it one more time.

This week's closure was focused primarily on detail work. We have about 850 sprinkler heads, about 450 drain basins, and hundreds of trees that we need to finish trimming. Another area of major focus this past week was bunker playability and consistency...or in layman's terms we did the "Sand Shuffle." The sand shuffle is not some new crazed dance move you'll see at a wedding or the disco, its my way of saying we were checking and adjusting the depth of sand in the bunkers.

In order to have a consistent playing bunker, you have to have a consistent bunker sand profile of 4-6 inches. So the first thing done to check the consistency of all the bunker sand depths is to randomly "pot hole" the bunker floor to expose how deep the sand is. Bunker pot holing is a simple process of just using a shovel and pulling back the sand down to the base dirt. You can see here where one of the crew has pulled back the bunker sand so the shuffle crew can see where, and how to adjust.


Here is what the results of "pot holing" tell me...

Not enough sand, need to add


Vs...

Just the right amount


After the depth of sand is checked, the crew moves in fix the problem. It might be as simple moving the existing sand around, such as here where the sand rake enters and exits the bunker.


Or you might have to add some sand like the guys are doing here. Many of you have seen this trailer hauling sand around the course when we are top dressing the greens and how it dumps the sand into the top dresser. When I bought this trailer I also bought an attachment that allows it to fill bunkers as well. Check out this short video.


As you can see, the sand gets added then the staff moves the sand around to the areas that need it. Yesterday I was asked "Why do the bunkers need sand already, we just built them last year" The answer is the sand just gets moved around a lot, either by mother nature or by mechanical means. Sometimes that even means it gets removed from the bunkers, like when we have strong winds. Also, the staff takes great care to keep the sand clean through general maintenance and that means we blow debris out of the bunkers all the time, which also blows sand out of the bunkers. Additionally, certain high use bunkers get the sand whacked out of them from the golf clubs. A great example of this on an extreme scale is the practice bunker at the range. I filled it with sand 3 times last winter, from basically November to May. Think about what Tony would tell you when you're in a green side bunker...."Open the face, hit 2 inches behind the ball, and follow through with you're swing." Right? Well the resulting swing, if done correctly, usually makes a lot of sand fly out with the ball.

Its important to have the correct amount of sand consistency for a couple of reasons. First and foremost is so that your club has a consistent media to play through. You don't want the club to dig through a 1/2 inch of sand then hit compacted dirt, or a rock, which could stop your forward club head motion causing the ball to not escape the hazard, not to mention now you just chunked brown dirt on bleach white sand. Also, a consistent 4 inch profile helps the playability of the sand as it related to firmness. Now firmness of a bunker can be a major debate, some like them hard and some like them soft depending on one's style of play. There are also a lot of physical properties of the sand, as it relates to size and shape that affect playability. When it comes to how the sand depth affects playability its pretty simple. If the sand depth is too thin it could be overly firm. A firmly compacted sand makes it hard to get under the ball to hit the flop shot, or it cold cause the ball to "hit hard" and roll up next to an edge or create a tougher shot due to the lie. If the sand is too thick, it could be overly soft. Softer bunkers could lead to plugging (commonly known as the "fried egg"), or make longer shot very difficult.

Particle size and shape of the sand is important as well. If the sand mix has a lot of larger, round particles it will not compact enough (think of a jar of marbles). If the particles are to angular, they will work themselves into a tightly compacted profile and become very firm (kind of like a jig saw puzzle fitting together). Fortunately the USGA has done massive amounts of research on bunker sand particle sizes and what makes a good, overall acceptable blend. During the reconstruction of the golf course a lot of consideration was given on what "blend" to use in the bunkers and it was decided to use a blend called 328 bunker sand. It is very widely used throughout the area and produces a very good playing surface when properly managed.

So to try and give the membership the best of both worlds as it relates to firmness, I try to maintain the bunkers so the top 1/2 inch or so a bit softer, and the bottom portion of the sand profile is more firm. I've found this maintenance style allows the ball to "splash and bounce" when entering the sand. By splash and bounce I mean when the ball hits the sand it displaces a bit of sand (like when you do a cannon ball into the pool). This splash takes away the force of impact. After the ball splashes through the loose material on the top it contacts the compacted material beneath and bounces a little bit, releasing onto a smooth portion of the bunker. This style also accommodates the many different possible shots from the bunker. A bit softer on the top for the traditional "hit 2 inches behind the ball" shot that many of us use; firmer on the bottom for the longer shots from farther away. You can see in this pic that the upper 1/2" or so is a little dirtier, that's from tilling it daily to create the splash zone. You can also see the bleach white sand underneath that stays compact to make the ball bounce a bit onto the smooth surface.


To produce this layered style of compacted sand, the bunkers are compacted with a plate compactor after the sand depths have been corrected. The compactors weight about 150 lbs and vibrate at a high frequency. Between the weight of the machine and the high frequency shaking, the subsurface becomes tightened up while the surface has that 1/2 inch of loose materials as you'll see in the video. Notice the sides of the compaction plate as it pushes out the loose material on top.


Part of this year's summer projects was to come up with a remedy to all of the lost balls left of #12 green. When the landscaping was trimmed back this year, my staff found three 5-gallon buckets of balls in the tall grass. In discussing the issue with Tony, he had a great idea of just removing the landscaping and sodding the area. Tony's explanation was that by sodding the area anyone that goes left has a chance to chip back to the green and save par instead of dropping a ball and playing for bogey. The concept was discussed with the golf course architect, Gordon Lewis, who endorsed this minor modification. Tony's idea was also brought up at the recent Green & Golf Committee meeting and was given unanimous support before it went to the Club's Board for final approval.

Here is the area right after the landscaping was removed


Final prep


After sod installed...the view as you now approach 12 green


When completed there will be two drain basins in the bottom of the area. Everyone needs to remember that this newly grassed area was designed to be a drainage retention area for 12 fairway, not to be a drained playing area and it might hold a little water from time to time. Fortunately, even when it has rained heavily I have not seen standing water in the bottom of the littoral for very long. I think if it does flood due to heavy rains, there will only be standing water in it for an hour or two and can played under the "casual water" rule. On the south side of the old littoral is an over flow pipe that was installed in case the littoral filled up with a couple of feet of water. I will have to hide the intake of the pipe with some landscaping because I cannot lower the pipe to put a drain box on it. Even still, I think everyone will appreciate the improvement to playability and think the area is 1000% better!


A small project that was completed was resodding the silver tee on 15 with a more shade tolerant grass variety called zoysia. It is the same grass that is on 15 blue tee. This summer we have converted a few tees to zoysia that were in a bit too much shade for bermuda grass; 12 blue, 16 blue, 15 silver, & 18 blue.



Some general stuff that we worked on was trying to get some more sunlight on the tees at 15. Many of you have witnessed over the years how the beautiful cypress head had becomes plugged full of exotics like brazilian pepper and bishopwood trees. These invaders spread prolifically and produce massive canopies that block the needed sun until almost mid-day. To combat the shade issues I had a tree company come in and clear the exotics back away from the cart path. In this picture, inside this massive strangler fig tree there is actually 4 or 5 palm trees being swallowed alive. You can even see the zoysia sod pallets sitting on 15 silver tee...still in the shade. I took this picture at 10:30.


same spot, same time, 1 day later


A small project that is more of a maintenance issue is to always make sure we maintain the smooth contours of the course. Here, the staff is leveling a small depression in the fairway that settled from when we removed the large rocks earlier in the summer.


Our last major project of the summer is to mulch the landscaping. You might remember in the previous blog posting that I had all of the palm tree trimmings turned into mulch. Now its time to use that recycled material out to the course and dress up the beds. This project will take us a couple of weeks.

First it is hauled out and dumped ahead of the spreading crew


Then the crew spreads it around.


I look forward to mulching the property every year! I think fresh mulch makes such a dramatic difference in the course's appearance. When I see mulch rolling out of the shop I know season is right around the corner and the cooler weather is almost here...its a SW Florida version of the leaves changing colors.

August 31, the dawg days of summer are here!!!

We are officially in the Dawg days of Summer!!! Its almost oppressive outside and that gives me all the more respect for my staff for not only enduring, but pressing harder because I asked them to. Although we have received enough rain to float Noah's ark in the last 3 weeks, the staff has made great progress preparing for the upcoming season.

One huge project we have been working on is cleaning up the potato vine that consumes everything in its path. Here you can see how bad the hedge on 16 had gotten in one year. The potato vine had grown over 75% of the hedge in certain spots and completely consumed some of the palm trees.


Here is after my staff worked all day to remove the vine. Notice that you can now see the palm tree fronds.


My guys have completed removing as much vines they could from all of the hedges along the eastern property line and 16. In total they removed about 100 cubic yards of potato vine. For those of you who are here you'll notice massive amounts of the vine yellowing out as it dies along the cart path from 14 green to 16 tees. We are attacking it on a large scale now as it is starting to make new seed pods...the potatoes.

Along the cart path on 15 we have been doing a lot of work to remove all of the encroaching vine and exotic trees as well. Here's a quick video on what happens to the approaching enemy forest.


As you can see, I try to shred as much of the material as possible to use it as mulch. Also, it cuts down on the expense of having to haul off all the debris. Most of you know that we are tackling the monumental task of trimming all the palms trees in house this year and have seen the blog pictures of the massive amount of "waste" generated from the trees. Well, I've found a way to use that waste and turn it into finely shredded mulch for us to use around the course in our upcoming course wide mulch marathon. Check out this next sequence....

We trim the trees


We haul trimmings and any other horticultural waste to my shop


Then we do this....in one side as waste, out the other as usable mulch!


Take a look at this short video and see it in action!


Now that's recycling at its finest!!!

We've also been finishing up lots of other projects that got side tracked due to bad weather. I'm happy to say that we are finally finished with all of the new landscape enhancements. Here is a pic of some new palms planted on the left of #3 fairway to help knock down some of the those left turning shots just past the Plageman's house


I added a few palms here because of a severely high nematode count in the soil that made growing healthy grass impossible. Because this spot is within the required 30 foot buffer zone from any dwelling when using Curfew to treat for nematodes, we were not able to treat the area to control the problem. So instead of looking at thin, weed infested grass I planted the palms so we can purposely kill the grass and put down some mulch.


While the tree trimmer was on #8 green, I had him turn this dead cypress into a perfect snag. A snag is a dead tree left standing. Just because a tree is dead doesn't mean that it doesn't serve nature still. There are several reasons to leave snags up and probably the most popular is that birds of prey like eagles, owls, osprey, and hawks like to nest in snags. These birds like to use snags because they have large wind spans and they don't want to take a chance on damaging their only means of transportation in a tree that has lots of small, close together branches. By trimming off all of the "twiggy" material in this snag, and its close proximity to a lake, I created a perfect Osprey nesting site. I've seen several Osprey sitting on this tree so lets keep our fingers crossed.


I added these areca palms in front of the old maintenance building area between the driving range and #5 to break up the view of the building from the range tee. In a couple of years these new guys should be catching up to the really big arecas on the sides of the range and completely hide the building.


A little tweak to the course that is really nothing other than a height of cut change is this new run off area behind #8 green. I wanted to put this in prior to opening last year but didn't have time before we opened to get the grass cut down and used to being mowed short. This will be a nice compliment to the natural shape of the green and surrounds.


As you already know, a couple weeks ago we verti-cut the fairways pretty aggressively, followed by a light top dressing. Any areas that were a little bit thin or a crease was made from a machine were hand top dressed so we can keep the smooth contours. In a couple of weeks these lines of sand should disappear.


To help the fairway areas heal in and get full coverage, it would seem appropriate to give the grass a little food to promote new growth. Now when I buy fertilizer, I tend to buy a little bit more than what you would go buy at Home Depot. Here Eric is filling up a 4 ton spreader from a trailer called a kilabrew. Each one of the 4 hoppers can hold almost 5 tons of material. That would probably do your yard a few times, and many most of your neighbors too.


My philosophy on fertilizing (or feeding the grass) is similar to how I eat...or should eat I guess. I don't sit down once a month an gorge myself, at least I try not to. Most of the time I eat smaller amounts more often. That's exactly how I fertilize the course, small amounts more often or "spoon feeding." This way I feel the grass has a better chance of absorbing the food before it either floats down the drain in the summer or gets washed past the root system from irrigation. Starting now through April we will be out fertilizing the course about every 2-3 weeks with light rates of fertilizer to continually spoon feed in nutrients to promote a health turf.

You may have read in my last posting that I had the area's USGA Agronomist in to do a site visit. The purpose of the visit is to ensure the maintenance practices are in line with the overall long term success of the course for both health and playability. Part of what the Club receives in having the USGA out is a written report of what was observed during the visit. These reports are excellent in explaining in a non-biased way what the practices were in place when they visited, what observations were made, what observations have been made at other facilities that might be helpful, and what long term practices are recommended. I truely hope that you will take the time to read it and better understand your golf course and the science behind the maintenance practices. Click here USGA REPORT




News flash....its raining again! More to come, stay tuned.

August Aerification Week

Another aerification week has come and gone...all things considered, it went fairly well. We started off the week with a lot of afternoon rain, which during a week when you are beating up the course is a kiss of death. Monday and Tuesday we spent all morning making a huge mess hoping it would stay hot and dry so we could have an easy clean up only to see the storm clouds building up to the south of us. Fortunately we had already planned on working the course in small sections at a time in case it rained so the race to clean everything up before it turns into a huge pile of mud wasn't so bad. Despite our Monday and Tuesday woes, the rest of the week was really productive as the weather held out for us.

As usual during our aerification weeks, late on Sunday afternoon the greens were aerified. One thing I did differently this time was to use a smaller tine which produced a small hole. The reason I did this was because I wanted to remove less of the mat layer or the "cushion" under the grass so the greens will become more receptive. I was asked a great question the other day, "why are you aerifying the greens so much if we want to build up a mat layer to soften the greens?" The answer is that its all about managing the build up.

Try to imagine the soil profile as a large tank, and the grass building up the mat layer which make the greens more receptive is like a hose filling the tank up. As the grass grows, it naturally fills up the tank. Now think of the aerification process like a drain at the bottom of the tank. To make sure the tank doesn't over flow we have to open the valve (aerify) to let some of the water out of the tank. We want some thatch and organic material because that's what make the greens receptive, but not too much thatch because it can be negative to the grass's health and playability. So my job is to open the drain on the tank just enough to moderate what gets taken out to build up the right amount of mat layer. All the while being mindful that we don't want too much thatch to build up over the summer because I can only aerify greens in the summer and we have a long golfing season ahead of us that will be adding to the tank. It's a balancing act between depleting the tank enough so it can hold all the water (thatch) until next summer when we can't aerify, while managing for playability and long term health. Basically I have to match what I remove with what gets put in, and leave a little room for expansion.


Here is a pic of a typical green's profile on our course. Notice the brown stuff or mat layer just below the grass. This is what we were missing last year when the course reopened, its the cushion that makes the greens receptive and can only be had with a little bit of age.


On the fairways this week we concentrated on heavy verti-cutting and sanding. The verti-cutitng process is the same as what we do for the greens, just much more aggressive. Check out this small video and you can see what I mean.


Here's a pic...notice how much material is flying out of the machine


As you can see, aggressive might be an understatement! Since we can't lightly verti-cut the fairways all the time like we do the greens, we have to go in an really rip them in the summer. This process removes the thatch and what I call the "bowl of spaghetti" growth habit of the grass. What I mean is that over time the grass will start to lay over and grow to be a very gnarly, tangled mess like a bowl of spaghetti. By verti-cutting the grass, all of the interwoven strings of "spaghetti" are removed allowing the grass to grow upright.

Once the fairway has been verti-cut, a large turf vacuum is used to remove all of the thatch and long runners of grass that were just cut. Once vacuumed, the fairway is mowed on last time, then blown off to prepare for the last step.


Afterward the clean up process, all of the fairways were top dressed and brushed to promote a firm surface and maintain a sandy upper profile. I had 20 truck loads of sand brought in (that's approximately 460 tons of sand) to spread over the course. The entire process took 2 ten hour days to complete.


Like the greens surface, the addition of sand to the fairway soil profile is an excellent way to maintain a high quality playing surface. Many of you remember sanding the fairways years ago to help with the very heavy accumulation of organics from the old course, and by do so now we can maintain a good firm fairway. Here is pic of a sand profile from a front 9 fairway. As you can see, it has appreciable thatch built up (the brown stuff under the grass) in just one year. This is a testament to the good growing conditions on the front 9 due to the very sandy soils and is exactly the reason for the heavy verti-cutting. The addition of sand, in combination with verti-cutting will helps break down the thatch much better.


Now here is a pic of a soil profile from the back 9 fairways and it's composition is much different. You can see it is very rocky and the thatch layer isn't as developed as the profile from the front. Again, this is attributable to the harder growing conditions on the back. I will have the back 9 fairways top dressed heavier to promote a better growing environment and hopefully a better playing surface.


During our closed week I scheduled a site visit from the area USGA Agronomist. Now that we have our new course I wanted to make sure we are on the right track to having a healthy and beautiful golf course for a long, long time. Through the USGA's Turf Advisory Service, we can have a non-biased "audit" if you will of our maintenance practices. The Agronomist reviews course conditions compared to practices and will give us recommendations or comments on what we are doing, might want to consider doing, or even what they see others doing that is successful. After the visit, the USGA will send the Club a formal report of their findings and recommendation for the us to consider. I will have the USGA in semi-annually for this service.

Here is pic of the Agronomist explaining his finding on #1 green. This is a great learning process for assistants. In the pic is my assistant Keith, Mr. Dean, Todd Lowe with the USGA, and a couple of USGA interns.


Another project I started last week was trimming palm trees. The good news is that I was fortunate to hire a former tree trimmer a while ago so I decided to tackle this project in house. The bad news is that the trees haven't been trimmed in a few years so there is a massive amount of material to trim off each tree which is making the process very slow. I was asking my trimmer how he was doing and he said that while he is trimming 50-70 trees a day now, on trees that were trimmed last year he could trim almost 100 a day.

Here you can see the one palm that is trimmed as compared to the two others that are about to be. BIG DIFFERENCE!



This pic is kinda like a "where's Waldo" picture...he's in there, I promise!


Once all of the fronds are trimmed off, my staff comes around and picks the material up and hauls it to back to my maintenance compound. All of this material will be shred on site and then reused in the mulch beds.


Lastly, this week I had scheduled to have all of the landscape enhancements finished up. That was until we received 2.5" of rain yesterday which killed any ideas of planting palm trees. The grasses will still be planted, but we will need to finish up some of the areas when it dries out due to heavy puddling in some areas.

Here are all the plants waiting to be planted


Here is some new grasses behind 3 green along the road that were just planted


Here is the new plantings on 8. As you can see, we have received some substantial rain lately


Here is a pic of the new bushes planted behind 14 green to fill in the empty spaces


Here is a pic of the right side of 16 tees


After all of the grasses are planted we will go behind and put in fresh mulch to finish dressing up the new look.

You guessed it, more rain. We are constantly checking drain lids for grass clippings that clog the drain lids


Hope your summer is going well. See ya soon!

Friday August 13, 2010

Right now, the local weather man has the easiest job on the plant. Its almost as if I'm seeing a repeat of the same news cast every evening. Its the typical late summer forecast...you know the one where he says "Today's weather is going to be hot and sticky with a huge chance of rain!" It is not uncommon when it rains for the course to get 1-3" of rain per episode, and when the recent tropical storm went by, that was everyday for almost a week.

Rain is a double edged sword. You want it to happen frequently, but no too much for too long. The affect of the all the rain isn't felt so much from all the water where you have drainage, its felt in the heavy cloud cover which reduces the intensity of the sunlight. Bermuda grass needs a minimum of 8 hours of high intensity sunlight to thrive. So when you have a long weather event, like the passing of a tropical weather system that doesn't let the sun shine, coupled with our aggressive maintenance practices, sometimes conditioning slips a little backwards in areas where you were already riding the razor's edge, or even in areas in wide open spaces.

This pic shows a small section of #10 green where the aggressive maintenance plus the heavy cloud cover for 5 consecutive days caused the turf canopy to thin out.


These areas are receiving special care to ensure they are nurtured back to health quickly and are only temporary blemishes. By raising the height of cut, increasing top dressings, and elevating fertilizer applications the small spots will disappear quickly so don't worry.

When you get rain in areas where you don't have enough drainage and the water just sits there, you get a whole lot more problems. On 15 tees, not only do we have massive shade issues,


But the tees are so perfectly flat that the water sheet flows off very slowly and ground becomes water logged for days on end. The standing water causes the grass to start rotting and thinning out. This tee was under water for almost 3 days from the continual rain fall.


To correct the issue I had the staff install some subsurface drainage on the white tee this week and we will install drainage on the red tee next week. Step one is to sod cut the drain lines. Unfortunately the sod was so rotted we had to throw it away, Normally we would save it and put it back.


Step two is to excavate the drain lines


Step three is to lay a blanket of gravel down first, install the drain pipes, and then fill the drain lines up with gravel.


Now the tee should drain adequately and I have a tree service scheduled to come in next week to work on thinning the heavy vegetation to the east of the tee to increase the sunlight.

By now many of you have seen our new fan on 15 green and have stood in front of it, appreciating the cooling effect on yourself more so than for the turf. Yet, I can tell you that the turf is also very appreciative. At this time in 2008 that green was almost dead from the intense heat and humidity back in that pocketed section of the course. I'm happy to report the grass on the green is doing great and the fan is a big hit for both players and turf. As you can see in the pics, the maintenance staff can pic the fan up with our loader and install, as well as remove it when needed.



Our landscape enhancement program continues on. Here we are installing the screening by the last house on 18. Given a little time, the hedge should fill out nicely to provide a good screen. The week of August 23 the remaining enhancements will be installed around the property. A few of the areas are #8 tee, #16 lake bank and right of the cart path, as well as some palm tree and bush installs on holes 3,4,5,10 & 18, some screen materials at the range, and maybe a few others.


Next week is aerification week so we will be extremely busy. I'll let everyone know when I update the blog afterwards so you can see what we did and all the new improvements. Stay tuned.