Status of the greens

Ok....so next time you are out on the greens look at the greens without looking at the collar or the first 3' of the outside of the green. Most of the greens themselves are looking great, we are just struggling with the collars and the cleanup laps. I have been getting a lot of questions on the status of the greens - How they doing? The areas we are struggling with are areas that I knew we were going to struggle with. They tend to stick out, especially when a lot of these areas are entrance or exit points. So look down....if you see one of these areas when walking off a green, make a mental note to try to avoid these areas with your feet on the next green.

Collars and cleanups are typical problem areas for new greens. That being said...I'm pretty happy with most of the greens....even 5&14 are holding their own. The greens I'm disappointed with are 7,13,15. These greens struggled through this summer a little more that I would have liked to see. Even though some of the greens look rough around the edges, I'm not extremely concerned for their long term health. That is because the centers of the greens look great, just the outsides with high traffic look bad. This tells me that our struggles are more due to a brutal July with a lot of play on new greens, than a larger, more widespread problem.

I wouldn't say the greens are great, wouldn't say that are good, but I would say they are ok and are still rolling decent. I would have to admit that they are far below my expectations from what I had imagined they would look like after this summer, but then again I've been told by more than a few people that often times my expectations are unobtainable. All-in-all not a bad first year for greens that were seeded just 8 months before opening.....not great...but not bad.

We aerify the 19th and 20th of this month and after that we should really be able to take advantage of some good weather and get them sweet. I know patience is not one of my strong suits but I only have to wait a few more weeks to get them going at a pace I can be happy with.