Irrigation

Bad things come in pairs?? Had two leaks yesterday. One on 15 and one on the range. That's 4 guys working on irrigation this morning. That's a lot of manpower taken away from doing other things. We have to get this stuff fixed this morning so we can turn the water back on for greens this afternoon.

Punching

We are starting to aerate greens this morning with a solid bayonet tine. This time of year you have to put some kind of hole in them every couple of weeks to keep the greens open and breathing. You can do this with virtually no impact on ball roll.

Verticutting

We are working on getting all the fairways verticut. This helps remove some of the thatch and alleviates some of the puffiness we see in the fairways this time of year.

I'm doing it this week because we are scheduled to topdress fairways next week....if I can get the sand. I just called yesterday and Branscome won't have any until next week. I have to call around and see if I can find something to get us started at a reasonable cost.

Chinese investors buying up U.S. golf courses - Los Angeles Times

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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

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Flag sticks

I have contacted the vendor that sold us the flagsticks this year. A lot of the prisms are falling out. Working on getting this fixed.

Bunkers

The greenside bunkers look good. It's amazing the difference between the greenside, where we have dedicated bunker irrigation, and the fairway bunkers where we don't. Someday, if we ever get a new irrigation system, we need to put these zone lines around the fairway bunkers. It results in much better playing conditions and firmer sand.

Spraying

Started spraying greens this morning way earlier than any normal human should be awake.

We are drenching in a fungicide for Pythium root dysfunction along with a couple other products.

Compost topdressing

The sand/compost mix really gets those practice tees jumping. These tees were burnt up last week because that compost is really hot, but they jump back better than ever.

Walk-ons

The high traffic areas on and off greens look really good. I hate ropes on a golf course with all my being, but they are working. Should be interesting to see how the greens hold up through this week. Mid to high 90's all week.

Bumpy

Greens need to be rolled. Had planned on doing it today but with all the rain yesterday I held off. Maybe tomorrow.

Greens speeds

The greens are rolling about 8.5-9' today. They have been a little on the slower side since aeration. There are a lot of factors that go into this. I have raised cutting height a little, decreased rates of growth regulator, and the increased moisture hasn't helped.

I'm a little gun shy this time of year. Don't want to set them back going into the heat of the summer for an extra foot or so.

When we topdress we have to wait to mow, thus the greens get slower. If you mow greens with sand, the sand dulls the mowers (like sandpaper on a knife). Then the mowers will pull at the grass versus cutting. This pulling will bruise and damage the grass - something you don't want going into the summer. The grass will only get weaker the longer into the summer you get. If you set it back early, you won't have a change to recover until about September.

Getting some air to them

We are core aerating #7,9,13 this morning. The last few days of rainfall has brought on some algae on these greens. It looks a lot better this morning versus yesterday but I still want to get some air down in the root zone to help dry things out.

Just got my June soils report back. We are in really good shape going into summer. 14 had some areas that had some excess nitrates in the collar, but it seems to look like all that gypsum and potassium is paying off.

Wrong spot

Someone yesterday evening must have mistaken #2 tees for the practice facility. Diviots everywhere and about 30 range balls on 2.

Please......

Looking promising. Don't split now.

Rain

We need some! Maybe this afternoon? The well has been running but I'm trying to not completely fill that pond with salt water. May not have a choice if we don't get rain soon. Course really dried out yesterday. Had to run about 500,000 gal last night.

Collars

Working on sodding out the remainder of the winter kill around greens. #5 is the last one to do.

Slow greens.

We didn't mow greens this morning. With the forecasted heat and humidity today, I wanted to give them a break. They are a little slower than I thought they would be when skipping a mowing, but they do look healthy.

Aeration.

We are aerating some of the thin and dry areas on the course. This will help the Bermuda recover.

Spraying and loosing

Spraying greens this am. Fungicide and foliar fert. These cool mornings make spraying a lot more enjoyable.

The guy in the Blue in this pic (Ross) just got an assistant-in-training at Pebble Beach! Will be leaving in the next two weeks for Cali.

We've had some turnover lately. Makes things a little difficult when your experienced, dependable guys start leaving, but all are opportunities that they can't pass up.

Fairy Ring

We have had a breakout of fairy ring last night. We actually just made a preventive application for this on greens on Monday. This is a fungus that is very active in newer greens. I sent a sample away last week and they couldn't even pick it up because it was so deep in the soil.

This is just now showing up, mainly because of the wet winter, then dry weather, and a 1/2" of rainfall last night with some warmer temps. The warmth and water stimulates the fungal activity. This is a problem that should eventually lessen in severity once the fungal populations stabilize in the relativity new greens mix.

One of my issues is that a curative application of fungicide and wetting agent is about $4500 per application. OUCH!

It isn't a fungus that will cause turf loss (usually), it's just really unsightly.

Greens predictions.

The greens have looked great lately, but I'm still really concerned with some of the edges (#2,5,11,13,14). I strongly believe that we are still going to have some troubles with these edges again. It comes down to maturity and traffic. The greens are maturing but some of these edge spots are not. They are just filling in from last year. Lee really didn't get any recovery through the cold winter and the spring hasn't been any thing to brag about either. Seems like we went straight to summer. This leaves these spots immature and susceptible to injury.

We have been doing everything possible the last 8 months to baby these edges. We water them different, different wetting agents, no growth regulator, different nutrient program, higher height of cut, modified front rollers to limit shear, etc.

I have started to put up ropes on some of the greens to try and control traffic on to the greens. I would really like to take advantage of the next 15 days and limiting traffic on these walk on areas will help.

We did do 3000 rounds in May! That's an average of 103 rounds a day with only 2 days closed for the month! The traffic is starting to show.

Aeration and topdressing

We finished greens today. I didn't want to over drag the greens and rough them up with some higher temps coming. For this reason the holes are not completely filled. They are still rolling pretty good.

Greens speed

The greens were right at 11' yesterday. I had to water them last night and they lost significant speed. I hadn't planned on rolling behind the mowers today, but I had to rearrange guys this morning to get them rolled in order to try and keep the speeds consistent with yesterday.

There are so many variables that affect greens speed. So much of it depends on Mother Nature, humidity, moisture, etc. It's not a science. I do try to keep them within a foot day-to-day but that's not always possible. They might pick up speed by this afternoon but it's hard to tell.

We do aerate and topdress tomorrow. The greens are in desperate need of a verticutting and topdressing.