Burn

The greens are a little speckled from the fert that we put down early in the week. This is just a tip burn that they will grow out of in the next 2 days. It's from the salts in the fertilizer....draws water out of the plant, much like it does in humans.

They look a lot better. That fert is kicking in and they are really filling in. Still a little slow from the extra growth and a little higher cutting height...when I say higher I mean 0.005" higher. That's how fine tuned the mowers need to be. I will bring them back down and speed them up middle of next week once they have recovered a little but from a tough week last week.

Greens

We are fertilizing greens with a bunch of different products today. We are also putting down a light dusting of topdressing. The greens have been a little thin and have really been beat up from all the mowing, rolling, and foot traffic the last week.

I intentionally kept them lean (low amounts of nitrogen) so they weren't flushing with growth, making it difficult to achieve the desired greens speeds for the Member Guest. It doesn't make them look exceptionally good, but they were rolling good.

I am really going to push them for the next two weeks to get them to fill in with the great weather we have coming with really cool nights. I want to get them filled in so they have the opportunity to mature going into next year.

This might slow them down a little for the next couple of weeks, but shouldn't be enough to make it that noticeable.

We are in good shape going into this fall. The greens will have the opportunity to continue to develop that much needed thatch layer that helps cushion the plant from mechanical damage. This was the first full year with the new greens and we faired much better than I expected.

Greens are like children....the older they get, the more tolerant they are to outside stresses.

Tournament prep

Just finished up for the evening. I brought the guys came back in this evening to mow all the greens, fairways, tees and approaches. The course is in really good shape for member guest.

Greens

The greens look a lot better this morning compared to the last few days. It's amazing what a few cool
Nights can do for them. It was 57 degrees this morning.

They are rolling around 11.5' for member-guest. I'll take that, especially with the weather we have had after aeration. Hot, humid and dry to deluge, wet, now back to dry. With the undulations in these greens...it should be fun.

Tifgrand

There is a different variety of Bermuda around 10 & 11. It is a new variety called Tifgrand. I love this grass. The color is awesome. I didn't put it around all the greens after the renovation because I didn't want the sod lines to be odious for years. It is a great looking grass that tends to handle the traffic better than the Tifway 419 that we have everywhere else.

Stuck head

I watered a few holes yesterday to water in some pre-emerg. Just watered each head for 4 min. This head stuck on all night. Going to have to replace it this morning. The approach and that right side rough is pretty wet.

Dialed in

Working on getting her dialed in for member guest. This is our busiest time of year. Not only are we getting everything prepped for tournament season, but we are also putting out all our winter pre-emerg for poa and fungicides for spring dead spot.

It's amazing how much more you can get done when working the whole crew until 5 or 6 everyday instead of 2:30-3:30 for a week plus.

The course is in really good shape , but the greens are still struggling a little. I didn't think they would be this far behind this time of year, but it's just the edges. The centers are in pretty good shape with the exception of #11. They are still rolling good - about 10.75'. These cool nighttime temps are going to help and we will give them a shot of fertilizer on Monday. I don't want to fertilize them before the tournament too heavy. You don't want them flushing with growth when you are trying to increase green speeds.

Temps

Look at those lows! That's root growing weather.

Greens edges

The greens are in pretty good shape but the edges are a little thin and yellowed out. Drought followed by heavy rain and then wet conditions are difficult to manage. We use wetting agents to hold water on these edge areas to help us keep them hydrated. During wet periods this keeps them too wet. The management practices that we utilize to keep grass in dry conditions, then end up hurting you during wet periods. I have made another application with a wetting agent that will help push the water through. It's a constant back and fourth.

Looking forward to get another year of maturity under our belt with these greens. The management will become more consistent once the greens become a little older.

Leaks

We have had quite a few leaks the last few weeks. All of the bad ones are repaired but still have a few weeping heads out there to fix. Working on this much irrigation while trying to prep for member guest is a killer. We don't have a huge staff, so anytime you have to allocate a couple of guys to irrigation, it takes away two guys from doing other stuff.

Still going

The never ending fairway mowing day. Started at 6:30 am and still going. Trying to finish the second cut.

Mowing!

We are really behind because of the rain. When we get that much rain it can put us behind, but when we get that much rain on a Monday....it is especially bad. Not to mention, this week and next are our busiest all year long. Prepping for member-guest then club championship.

We were finally able to get out on the fairways today to mow. It made an absolute mess with the clippings. That first pic is in the middle of the fairway...not the edge of the rough.

They finished mowing this morning and I had them just start over again going 18 back. After the second cut, they cleaned up pretty good.

Drain 11 green

We dug up the drain on 11 yesterday to make sure that it was working like it should. That's a deep hole!

It was working as it should...it just makes me feel a lot better knowing we don't have a clogged drain that's keeping the green wet.

A new fan for this green next year will do wonders.

Wet! Greens

These are some pictures from yesterday on 11. The greens were really wet and yellowed out. The 3" of rain was both good and bad.

There was some algae that popped up and the greens were yellowed out. The rain flushed the sodium out of the profile, it was acting as a natural growth regulator (and not a positive regulation) on the bentgrass, which was good, but it also pushed out a lot of the available nitrates through the soil, resulting in some yellowing for a few days. We are surging with growth right now even though they are under chemical regulation. For this reason, we mowed on Monday and Tuesday, but I needed to give them a break today. Normally we would mow everyday but they were looking wore down yesterday from all the rain and lack of sunlight.

11 was the only one that really looked bad. We ran the Subair quite a bit yesterday and today which helped dry it out.

They look 100% better today. Now that we are completely healed from aeration...They should start to get progressively faster every day going forward through the fall. I'm going to really start pushing them now that I know we are through the recovery.

Greens

The greens are loaded with sodium right now. The plant just does not operate correctly under these conditions. Hopefully this natural rainfall will build up and we will get some fresh, sodium free water in the greens. The salt is one of the reasons they are slow in some areas to recover from the aeration and a little puffy and slow.

I'm ready to get on with this fall - the greens are going to be sweet as soon as they recover from the big aeration and topdressing. Now I just need the weather to cooperate. This heat and humidity can go away.

I'm excited to see the current condition of the edges that we thought we would really struggle with this summer. They are in really good shape and will finally have the opportunity to mature. This will give them a head start going into what should be a really good year, next year. The greens are starting to mature and can start to handle more stress.

I was really careful with them this year, trying to take it easy on them their first full year of play. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much money, time and effort we put into these edges this year. It's nice to see the effort pay off. We could have done all of this and more to the old greens and they would have been really, really unhappy and sick right now with this amount of sodium and some late summer heat and humidity. It's easy to forget what the old ones were like (no one wants to forget more than me) but there is a huge difference between these greens and the old ones. Our greens speed never consistently fell below 8.5-9' all summer....even with the conservative management because of the relative immaturity. It wasn't uncommon for the old greens to roll less than 8' for extended periods of time in the summer.

The two pictures below are areas on 5 & 8 that had very little grass on them this time last year. It's great to see progression.

Look at that view

That would be a great picture without the spray hawk. For a bunch of guys that hate spraying, we sure spray a lot. The guys are good about it though. Would rather just go out and knock it out. Possibly the worst job on the course when it's hot out. Those spray pants are the hottest thing you could ever imagine wearing. We have a really solid crew on the course.

We were having issues with the sprayer this morning. The mix wasn't very happy coming out of the sprayer - kept getting clogged. The results....little streaky spray.

Dry and new equipment

There are some lines in the rough from the exhaust of one of the new tractors we just got in. The hot exhaust is angled out of the tractor onto the turf, burning the grass. You don't even know it's happening until a few days later when you start to see the tip burn. I'm currently working with the vendor to fix this issue. Shouldn't be a huge deal. The Bermuda will grow out of it in a week or so.

On another note....it's the driest stretch I've seen out here in 3 years. Really dry. Just look under the trees where we don't have irrigation. Irrigation coverage sticks out like a sore thumb now! I can't wait to shut this system down for the year. All the guys are sick of working on leaks and troubleshooting electrical and wiring issues. I know I'm ready to throw that wire tracer in the pond. We have been nonstop on irrigation work the last 2 weeks. Come on cool weather!

Greens and healing

The greens look ok....just ok.....nothing real great yet. We are a week from aeration and they are a little slow to recover. This crazy heat and humidity isn't helping, but more then anything, we need some fresh rainfall. The greens are loaded with sodium, and even though we flush them once in a while, you're still flushing with crappy water. The sodium really stunts the grass back this time of year with the shallow roots.

We are spraying another fungicide and some foliar fertilizer in the morning to try and get them kicking.

They are still going to be awesome this fall, just need a little rain. I'm going to start working them down tomorrow and if the weather cooperates, they should be rolling better by next week.

Irrigation

It's the driest I've seen it out here in a couple years. You can see the spots we have irrigation (working irrigation) and the spots we don't. The irrigation system is the most important capital asset we have. Not only do we use it to keep the grass alive, but we also use it to water in fertilizers and pesticides.