Little wet

We got 1.8" yesterday and it's a little sloppy out there. This is going to put a little bit of a hurting on my plans this week while getting the course ready for Sunday. Hopefully we can dodge the rain the rest of the week and complete all the mowing.

Green speeds

The greens are rolling around 10-10.5. That's not blazing fast but not bad. You have to be a little careful with them the first year, but after that it should be easier to keep the speeds higher.

Getting the geese.

Spring dead spot in bermudagrass.

There are some spots in the fairways that we get every year that are slow to come in. I spend about $7-10K on this disease every fall and the fungicides do help, but they are not a cure all for this disease. No one has really pinpointed a good management for this pest - we have tried many different things over the years with varied success.

Once the weather heats up again these spots will recover. We have really only had a week to week and a half of hot, growing weather for the Bermuda grass.

Greens

Today we cut greens, rolled them, verticut, mowed again, and finally topdressed. The green speeds are starting to get where I would like them for opening. I stimped them at 10.5' today. That is right about where I would like to keep them on a consistent basis.

The topdressing sand helps to smooth out any of the imperfections and helps to speed them up....among other things.

The course is getting close. We still have a ton of work to do in the next 2 weeks but we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Greens

The greens look spectacular right now. We are still working on getting them rolling faster. The focus now is to get as much of the leaf blades standing upright as we can, then continue to work on ball speed.

Tamping bunkers

We rented two plate tampers and I am having the guys go around and tamp all the faces of the bunkers. This should help the faces firm up. We might have to do this a couple times throughout this first year to keep them firm. After that they should set up.

Very labor intensive.......but it works.

Bermuda around greens

A lot of the Bermuda around greens is pretty smoked. There is some green tissue in there but I think I might have to sod some of it. We will aerate and topdress these areas in a few weeks to help with recovery and sod whatever doesn't come in. I have to wait to sod it because it too early in the year to get good, non-overseeded Bermuda. You don't want to put overseeded next to the greens because you could never get rid of the ryegrass and it would be spotty through the summer.

This grass is knocked back from a higher rate of roundup in the winter used to kill all the bentgrass the got outside the collar during washouts while seeding. Roundup is the only safe chemical to use this close to greens that will take out the bentgrass. Normally there is no problem with stunting the Bermuda (we spray about 70 acres of the golf course with it each winter) but when you have to manually backpack it around greens the rate can get a little high.

Greens

Yesterday we double cut greens with the first cut also doing a brush and light verticutting in front of the mower. The second mowing was next at a lower height (-0.005") than the first mowing. After the last mowing they were rolled.

We are doing the same thing today. The greens look good and we are working on getting them tight and fast.

Weeds

The course is pretty clean with the exception of some of the rough. The tees and the fairways are perfectly clean, but we have been spraying the rough the last couple of days to clean everything up - mainly poa and broadleafs. We have sprayed about $6,000 worth of herbicides in the rough the last 3 days. This is a little higher than normal, mainly due to the amount of rain and cold weather that we had this winter/spring.

Green

The fairways are starting to green up and the rough starting to show some signs of life.

I'm going to see what this rain does tomorrow and if we don't get any, carts will be on the fairways this weekend. If we do get rain, once the course dries out the carts will be on the fairways at that point.

Sod

We are working in getting a bunch of sod down around the course to cleanup some of the cart path edges and spots of wear.

Dare I say...Green

I’m starting to see some green grass.  We are working on getting the course ready for the opening party.  We have laid an entire tractor trailer load of pine straw in a week and the next load is due on Monday.  We have also been working on spraying all the weeks on the golf course.  We have a good amount of poa in the rough that we are spraying out.  The wet, cold weather has encouraged the growth of weeds this winter.  Other than some spots in the rough, the golf course is really clean.

 

I haven’t posted any pics lately….my Apple products have failed me.  I need to get my phone camera fixed so I can get some updated pics on the blog.

 

Brent Graham, CGCS

Director of Golf Maintenance

Two Rivers Country Club

1950 Two Rivers Rd.

Williamsburg, VA 23185

Office: 757-258-4606

Bgraham@tworiversclub.com

Governorsland.com

 

Golf Course

The 1" of rain got everything pretty wet but the warm weather the next couple of days should help to dry things out and start to green up the fairways.

We got quite a bit done this week before the rain. All the fairways, tees and approaches got mown and we started mowing the rough to clean everything up. The greens also got topdressed and the warm weather should help to get some growth out of the bentgrass.

Lets hope the warm weather sticks around.

Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com

Work

We are working on one of our irrigation leaks on #8. Quite a hole.......

We are getting a lot of stuff done with the nice weather and the course drying out. The amigos are here and we are really starting to get somewhere. We are prepping for sod, edging beds, spraying and mowing greens and starting to get the course in shape. If he happen to dodge the rainfall this week, we will be golden. Hopefully the temperatures stay up and the Bermuda will start greening up.

Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com

Amigos

All the amigos have arrived. We have a lot of work to do in the next 30 days. I'm starting to realize that we will probably not have enough time to complete all the things that I would like to before opening the greens. Hopefully the weather will stop fighting us and we will get some working weather in the next few weeks. That's the one thing that I hate about this job - the constant battle with something you can't control, Mother Nature.

Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Cell: 757-592-0840
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com