Green Speed

The greens speeds will probably be a little slower than usual this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The greens are out of regulation from the growth regulators that we spray on the greens to help keep greens speeds up. I am letting them come out of regulation for a few days to see if we can get them to flush with some growth - hopefully smoothing the greens surface and filling any remaining holes. The greens have still been a little bumpy and this should help smooth everything out. Once that is accomplished we will get back on the growth regulators, thus increasing green speeds.

Rolling greens

We are rolling greens this morning to get the greens ready for play today. We have two rollers, one of which broke on #15 and the other proceeded to break on #2. That being said the rest of the front 9 greens will not get rolled today. There shouldn't be that much difference in the greens speed from the ones that got rolled versus to ones that didn't. Thanks to our world class mechanic the rollers should be back up by tomorrow.

This is one good example of why it is important to keep a regular rotation of new capital equipment purchases year after year. After some time reliability with the equipment becomes a valid concern. We are fortunate that TRCC does a great job of giving us enough capital funds every year to purchase some new equipment, limiting the amount of reliability issues we have, and providing the needed equipment to keep the course in good shape.

Bunker edges

Here is a picture of the bunker edge that we are repairing on #5 fwy. Over time the edges get destroyed from the bunker rakes getting out of our deep bunkers. We are trying a new rubber block product to help reinforce the edge.

April Showers?????

The course is extremely dry and firm. The last couple weeks have been extremely dry and the high winds the last couple weeks are just compounding the problem. I have been trying to keep from watering the rough to save our good water, but I had to turn on the well last night. That means our irrigation water will start to quickly degrade in quality. We will start to adjust our management strategies to compensate for the increased sodium in the water - status quo here at TRCC - just a little earlier than years prior.

The Positive: there is plenty of roll for your driver with the firm and fast conditions!!

PG2 surround

Prepping for some new sod around the collar of PG2. We are going to install a newer Bermuda variety called Tifgrand to see how it does in this area.

I like to try these varieties in different locations to see how they do with full sun, shade, traffic, etc. we are also installing it next to the new bed on #1 to see how it does under that tree.

White tee #1

We are sodding the white tee on #1 to Zeon Zoysia. We have an older zoysia variety on the blue and white tees on #12.

This tee should do better with the zoysia instead of the Bermuda.

Leak

Here is a picture of the repaired pipe next to #7 green that the guys fixed. This was the culprit of the wet area to the right of number 7 this spring. It was a difficult leak to find because it wasn't real big, but it was leaking just enough to keep everything wet.

Tee aeration.

We are core aerating all the tees this week. This will help the Bermuda on the tees get going a little bit, and help with some of the spring dead spot that we have on the tees.

The spring dead spot on our course is more severe on the areas with some sand modification to the rootzone(tees, approaches). This is why I like to do core aeration in these areas to help with recovery and promote new growth - kind of a kick in the butt for the Bermuda to get up and moving.

This core aeration will be followed with an decent shot of fertilizer to help the tees fill in.

Aerway on Fairways

We use this machine on the fairways to slice a knife tine into the ground to help relieve compaction and aid in spring dead spot recovery. This is done in place of core aeration on the fairways - mainly due to the difficulty of cleaning up plugs and our poor soil structure.

Large roller

I rented a large 2-ton asphalt roller to go over the greens. The greens are still pretty bumpy from the deep time aeration and the poa in the greens. We are pulling out all the stops to try and smooth out the ball roll within the next week or so.

PG2

The green will be open for the first time today. Don't spend too much time on it - that might mess up your putting on the course! I am really excited with how it came in and it's current condition. We still have to do some new Bermuda sod around the outside of the green to cleanup the edge, but other than that it is completed.