Greens.

The greens are starting to show signs of stress from keeping them dry, mowing them very short and high rates of regulation. We are going to keep on with theses practices knowing there is only a month left with their existence. I am attempting to keep them firm and fast through June.

Course conditions

The course is really starting to dry out. The greens were pretty dry by the end of the day yesterday - just a hair drier than I thought they would get. The lower humidity yesterday really dried out the greens. They are firm and rolling about 11 on the stimp. This is about as fast as I would like to get them - any faster and they would start to become very difficult.

Rough aeration

We are aerating some rough around the golf course - concentrating to some of the high traffic areas. This aeration will help to relieve compaction and allow for water to get into the soil.

Spraying greens

We are spraying greens by hand from now on. I want to keep the big sprayers off the greens and I am very happy with the results of spraying by hand.

We are testing a new combination growth regulator on greens. We have been testing this product for the last month and a half. It does a much better job at really hurting the poa on the greens, giving the bent grass an opportunity to get the upper hand. This is a test that I normally wouldn't do, but since there is no worry about the long term effects on the greens I thought this would be the perfect year to do it. I have toyed with the idea of using a combination of different regulators on the greens in the past, but with the worry of keeping our current greens through the summer, I've never really pulled the trigger on being very aggressive on the poa. There are a lot of superintendents in the area that are asking about our results and I think that this product has the opportunity to really help guys with poa problems in older greens. I think we are close to having the rates dialed in, and it is doing a good job in helping us keep consistently fast greens.

Traffic

PLease remember to pick up you feet when walking on the greens. Marks like these injure the grass plant and recovery can be difficult - especially when we get into the summer. This will be a very important issue to stress next spring when we are playing on new greens - they won't be as mature as the greens are now.

Course conditions

The golf course is starting to try down a little which is good. The increased wind and no more quarter inch a day rainfalls is allowing the greens to dry down. This is good for the overall health of the greens and also increases the firmness resulting in higher green speeds.

Rain

We got another 0.25" last night. The greens have been staying pretty soft. Next week we will punch them with a hollow tine to get some air down to the rootzone. This will have little or no impact in ball roll once we roll behind the aerator.

Creek #12

The creek on #12 is done with the new rip-rap and sod. I am very pleased with the final product.

Greens

The greens are in great condition right now. Normally this time of year I would start to back off on pushing the greens for increased speeds to prepare our old bentgrass and poa greens for a difficult summer. This is not needed this year due to the greens construction project. I plan on pushing them hard up until the end. This has been something that I've waited a long time to do. We have never had the opportunity to see how far we can push them without the fear of losing greens in July and August. This spring will be fun to see what the limits actually are with our current greens - should be a great learning experience. We plan on having great rolling greens all the way up to the July 9th construction date.

Creek #12

Here is a finished pic of the creek on #12 after the new rip-rap. We still have to install some new sod to finish it off.

Morning Course Prep

Getting the course ready for play is an extensive process. Fridays are a little more chaotic getting everything ready for the weekend.

On a normal Friday throughout the summer here's what it takes to get the course and club grounds in condition for the day - these numbers are just the morning jobs before lunch:
88 man hours, 20 gallons of Diesel, 18 gallons of gas, 400,000 gal of irrigation water (if it has not rained in a few days), and 2 pots of coffee.

Rough

The rough is still a little dinged up from all the cool nights we have been having. All the rain last week has helped everything, and the warm weather that is forecasted this week should help green everything up. We are cutting the rough much shorter that we have in years prior. We will see how it works out.

Temp greens

We have started cutting the temp greens on a regular basis. They actually putt a little better than what I thought they would. We will begin some more maintenance on them this week which will include verticutting and topdressing.