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.