Rough #10

These scalped lines in the rough on 10 are from a bolt that broke on one of the decks on the rough mower. That side of the deck was lower than the rest and resulted in some scalped streaks. This grass should pop right back in a week - that's the great thing about Bermuda grass. If that was a cool season grass like fescue or bent this time of year it would really hurt it.

Collars

We are back to using the lattice when mowing greens. This really increases the amount of time it takes the guys to mow, but it helps with wear on the collars. We put the lattice down so the mowers travel over the lattice instead of the collar. Any little bit of wear reduction helps this time of year when it comes to the collars.

Spraying Fairways

We are spraying fairways and tees this morning with some fertilizer, growth regulator, and a wetting agent. I like to spray this once a month, but when the weather is this hot and wet/humid I have to shrink the spray intervals to 3 weeks. The grass ends up growing through the regulator faster when the weather is this warm. This spray mix is a great tool for keeping a consistent height on the fairways, decreasing labor by not having to mow fairways 4 times a week (we can limit it to 3), and saving some water (the wetting agent helps to wet the profile more consistently).

I put Gypsum down on Sunday because our calcium levels were pretty low from all the rain that we have got this month.  This was a new kind of gypsum that I was able to get from a vendor on short notice.  Usually one rotation of the irrigation heads will make gypsum disappear - not this time.  Even though I put down a heavy rate, the fertilizer didn't water in all that easy.  It is just now pretty much gone, and needless to say...that will be the last time I purchase that brand of gypsum.

Greens vs PG2

Here is a picture of PG2 this morning.  This green has been rolling about 1-1.5' faster than the rest of the greens.  Being about a year older that the others and planted on existing mix, it is much more mature than the rest of the greens.  We maintain this green exactly the same way we do all the others. 

This is exciting to see.  What that tells me is that the other greens should be much smoother and faster once they get a little older.  It will take much less maintenance and stress on the greens to keep them consistently fast.  We should start to see this maturation by this fall.

Pick em up!

You can see the scuffs across the green in front of my hose.

I'm going to start posting a Pick em up post every week - and believe me I won't have a tough time finding a new pic every week to demonstrate my point.

Equipment issues

We were in the process of topdressing fairways and we got 5 fairways done before our spreader broke down. I had planned on topdressing until dark, taking advantage of our Monday maintenance day, but unfortunately I had to send the boys home a little earlier than expected. I've had a new spreader on order for about a month now and should be here by next week. This is one of the main reasons that we try to replace equipment before it's completely broken down. Reliability becomes a major issue and in this case we will now have to do most of the topdressing this week in play.

We are fortunate enough that TRCC does give us sufficient capital to replace our equipment when needed -so we can avoid situations like this. Unfortunately we got a little unlucky with this one - seeing our new spreader will be here next week.

Collars

Aerating collars today. This should help the collars survive the summer. The longer grass on the collars actually makes it more difficult for the bentgrass to make it through the summer. That grass is made to me maintained at lower cutting heights, and when it gets longer the leaf blades have a tendency lay over each other and thin out.

Sod

Starting to sod some of the surrounds outside the collar. A lot of the areas have come back better than I expected, but there are still quite a few areas that we are going to sod this week.

Just getting a head start for the week.

Little stuff

Right now I am NOT real excited about the course conditions. We are pretty far behind on most of the detail work, the rough is scalped and has some clippings laying around, and the greens are not all that fast. This last few weeks of tree removal and rain has really started to catch up with us. It has been all we have just to finish the mowing the last couple weeks. Hopefully the weather will start to cooperate with us so we can get the place back into acceptable condition.

I have a list a mile long and have some very important things to do this week. We have to spray greens tomorrow, start topdressing fairways and approaches, aerate collars, fert the aprons and approaches, sod all the collars that we have been trying to grow in, a ton of irrigation work, along with all the mowing that we must accomplish on a normal Monday.

This is a picture of the cart path on 18. We really need to edge the paths but it is going to have to be pushed back another week. We just don't have enough guys to finish something like this tomorrow. There's always next week! Please......no more rain! We're good!

Collars

The collars are starting to show some decline. I have been expecting this the last month or so. The one major concern that most guys struggle with new greens is the collars. This is due to several different factors, but the smooth transition from Bermuda to bent without any kind of bump is helpful. We are going to be sodding some of the Bermuda surrounds this week to help with this issue.

These are just some of the growing pains after new construction. It will probably take a year or so to get everything back the way we want it.

Leaks

We have been pretty busy lately with all the rain and tree removal. The irrigation leaks have been building up and we have quite a few out there. We will work hard this week to knock out as many of these weepers as we can. There's enough irrigation work out there with our system to keep 2 full time guys going all week on this stuff - unfortunately we don't have the staff to put fourth this much manpower on one thing week after week.

Wet areas

There are still some wet areas out there, even though we have not got a lot of rain this week. Everything is just filled up to capacity right now and the water has nowhere to go. We have had an incredible amount of rainfall in June and I'm just glad that the temps haven't been too high. This type of rainfall coupled with high temps would spell trouble for bentgrass in our area.

Venting

Finished punching the greens with a small needle tine today. We do this to help dry the greens out a little bit and help them breathe a little bit - this is called venting. We do this throughout the summer to help keep the greens healthy.

13 t

12

5 green

1 tee

11 fairway bunker

3 fairway

Range

#1

1 tee

1 tee

Storm cleanup

We finally got all of the priority trees cleaned off the golf course. All the guys worked a 14 hr day today to get through everything. Not exactly the Friday afternoon we all planed on but we got it done.  There are still some trees out there that we have to cleanup, but all the trees that fell on fairways, bunkers, or play areas are cleaned up.  Lets hope that our weather returns to normal soon.

We lost 9 monster trees and about 15 other normal to small trees.  One of the trees that we lost was along the wood line to the left of 15 blue tee was the oldest tree we had on the golf course.  It was a huge oak that was really healthy!

I'll post some pics on the storm damage.

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

Greens

We are working on getting the greens rolling fast again after all this rain and humidity. We double cut and rolled yesterday which helped out a lot. I will say it again, this 007 is amazing. It has got really thick and full since the temps have gotten up there. Usually bentgrass runs and hides when the temps and humidity gets this high. They really need to be verticutted and lightly topdressed. We can't do that today because of the hot weather. I don't want to stress them out, so we will wait until Monday to do this.

Course conditions

It's been a rough last couple of days for the golf course. We got almost 9" of rain Friday and Saturday. We are working on getting bunkers fixed and we started mowing grass today. It's going to be all we have this week just to get all the bunkers fixed and grass mown out. It will be especially difficult if it rains again and we lost most of Monday due to the William and Mary Pro-Am. Monday is the day we get a good portion of our mowing done.

The greens are pretty slow from all the rain and humid weather. They are growing a lot everyday which doesn't help speeds. I am spraying them today with a fungicide (much needed with all the rain and humid weather) and a growth regulator. This 007 is really amazing - I am still trying to figure out a good amount of growth regulators to put on them to keep them from growing so much. I am getting into some very high rates, and the 007 just hogs right through it. It seems to be a very tough grass, even with the higher temps. We will get them figured out soon though. It's been a difficult spring for most guys with greens speeds - the relatively mild, wet weather is perfect for bentgrass to flush with growth - they do look good though.

Raking Bunkers

Here is a picture of the fwy bunker on 11 this afternoon. There was no effort made to take the bunker after 3 shots. It is important to leave the course better that you found it. This is especially frustrating because we don't have enough guys to rake bunkers in the morning. We are trying to get caught up on all the mowing after all the rain on Monday and all the expected rain on Friday. We also have to spray the fairways in the morning.

Usually we rake bunkers every morning, but occasionally when I don't have enough guys to get everything done that we need to get done, raking bunkers is the first thing to go.

We spent just under $300K of your membership dollars on these bunkers. Please make sure to put forth the effort to keep them raked for the group behind you.

Drainage around 11 green

Here is a picture of the right side of 11 green. This has been staying real wet lately and I think there might be a cut drain in here from construction. I am sure that the green is draining
but one of the old Outfalls from the old greens might be backing up this low area. It's a pretty easy fix, we just need to put some dig it up and put some new drainage in there. We are going to try to get that done sometime next week.

Topdressing around greens

Here is a picture of the topdressing that we did around the greens before aerating. We are working on getting these collars good and the transitions from apron to the collar seamless and smooth.

I am going to continue to really push these areas for the next couple of weeks and see how they recover. Whatever hasn't recovered by that time we will sod.