Not again

Here we go again. Just when the greens start to dry out for an afternoon. It's been a really wet June. Seems like we've done nothing but repair bunkers all month. 

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

Before and after

Before and after of the bunker on the right of 15 with the tree removal. Tree removal isn't always the most popular maintenance task, but is needed and makes a huge difference in certain areas. 

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

Verticutting and topdressing

Finished our verticutting and topdressing this evening. Really a miracle that we finished in 2 days even with a tournament on Monday. 

This will help keep the fairways breathing and draining like they should. Verticutting and topdressing are the foundations of thatch management...allowing the fairways to accept water and allow for firmer conditions with more roll. 

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

Tournament rounds, member play and the resulting aftermath

Attached are a few pics that demonstrate the effect of rounds after a a full week of outside tournament play. Last week we had the ladies VSGA stroke play (which went great), followed by a lot of member play, all during near 100 degree days. A few of these days we did almost 140 rounds in a day when we would normally do about half that. 

The golf balls are the tournament pin locations and all the tees outline the thinner areas. These recent cooler temps will help this weekend and it's nothing real concerning at this point, but is something that I'm keeping a close eye on. The goal going forward is avoiding some of these areas with pin locations for the next couple weeks. For this reason you might see some unusually odd/difficult pin locations on the interior greens. 

Mondays are important for us this time of year. It's our opportunity to give them a break and not mow or have any foot traffic on them. It just worked out this June that we have had events of 3 of the 4 Mondays in June. That's tough. 

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

Rain and greens

Got another 0.5" last night. Greens are wet. We could have done without that rain. This time of year I would like to either get nothing or over .8".  That amount would flush the greens and no rain would let me control moisture levels where we want it. These low areas and high traffic areas will get worn down easy when they are this wet.  Our one saving grace is that the temps will be a little cooler this weekend. 

We are finishing the small solid tine venting. This will help keep some air in the top inch and dry them out a little. 

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

Greens

The greens are a little wet and showing signs of a little thinning in the low, wet areas. Nothing that isn't expected with all this heat, but something to keep an eye on. 

We watered in a fungicide this morning to protect against root pathogens. As much as I hated to put more water on them, better safe than sorry. I really needed to get that spray down. 

With this break in the weather we will start punching all the greens with a needle tine this week. Keeping small holes in the greens this time of year helps them dry out and keep some fresh air in the root zone. 

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

Timely rain

It was starting to really dry out yesterday. These lower temps and a 1/2" of rain really helped out. Yesterday was tough. 

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

Carts by tees.

Members.......can't live with them, can't live without them. 

Hopefully, especially with the new forward tees in action, we won't get traffic patterns in the rough next to the tees without signs everywhere. 

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

Greens

The greens could use a day of R&R.  We've dad to mow everyday for a month straight. We got .15" of rain last night, which doesn't seem like much but it came after the irrigation cycle. They are a little soft and starting to show some signs of minor thinning in the low and high traffic areas. Nothing greatly concerning but still...it's a little early for this kind of extended heat. Next week looks absolutely brutal again. Let's hope for a cool July. 

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

Rough

Mowing rough this morning. We are pretty far behind from not mowing in the afternoon with all the tournament play. Mowing in the mornings is difficult because of the clipping mess and not having enough guys once you schedule all your morning stuff (greens, bunkers, watering, spraying, cups, tees, fairways, etc).  You have to dedicate 2-3 guys just for clipping cleanup so it not an awful mess when golfers get there. 

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

Spraying

We are spraying today both fairways and greens. Growth regulator going down on fairways and a little bit of everything on greens. We typically try and spray on Mondays, but with the course being open with tournament play the last two weeks, we have to fit it in when we can. 

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

Greens and play

Some of the greens took a little bit of a beating yesterday with all the traffic (#11,12). We have been absolutely packed all week with play. Nothing real concerning, but when you do 130 rounds on a day that it gets to 100, its to be expected. I'm just glad it was windy yesterday.  

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

Tough day

We had some wilt on the greens today. We were running this afternoon to keep up but it didn't get too bad. I try to keep them a little on the dry side with Temps like these so you don't boil any roots...but not this dry. The humidity fell out a little today and when it did we were chasing. To make things worse, we had an irrigation break on 5 tee that forced me to shut down a couple holes right in the middle of the day. We got it fixed fast and got the water back on. That's scary. Just glad we had everything we needed to fix it. Our older irrigation system doesn't have as many valves as some of the more modern systems (among other things).  The newer designs allow you to just isolate a few heads without having to shut multiple holes down.  So you could shut down a leak and still have water to your greens. That's a pretty important benefit to have in this area with Bentgrass greens. 

I'm not liking the 10 day forcast. About 2 days below 95.....and it's only June. Bummer.  Maybe July will be real cool.......one can hope. 

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

Wow

If this continues it's going to be a long summer.  This job can really create a hatred for summers. Come on leaf season. 

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

Greens and heat

The greens seem like they are in pretty good shape. They are finally regulated after all the rain. Starting to get more consistent day-by-day. The long term forcast for the next 10 days doesn't get me too excited. Not real happy with hot, humid days in the middle of June...seems like July weather to me.  It's the lows in the high 70's that I really don't get excited for. When the lows start climbing like that, it doesn't give the plant a chance to recover after a hot day. Hopefully we can dodge some of these rain showers today....that way I can control the moisture in the greens and not mother nature. 

Other than that...Course is starting to come together and the bermuda is finally liking life. 

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

Greens

We got another 3/4" yesterday morning. Course is finally drying down. The greens are still quite wet. We are turning all the fans on for the season and running the subair on a few greens to remove some of the excess moisture. 

Also, we started verticutting yesterday, finishing up this morning. We went in two different directions, then followed with a mow and light topdressing.  This will help maintain decent speeds and get some extra air in to the plant. 

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

Bunkers

We are working on repairing the washout. The bunkers are really bad. This takes a ton of labor to fix all them. We put hundreds of hours on fine tuning all the bunkers this spring, pretty muck all to be lost after a rainstorm like this. 

We are doing more hand work to fix the washout to help keep the sand depth on the slopes where it should be. Have 8 guys working on it today and will keep going on it tomorrow. Not sure we are going to finish by Monday. 

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

Sod forward tees

We are resodding the forward tees.  They should be ready in a couple weeks. 

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

Greens

We double cut greens this morning. They are pretty wet and sticky. They should start drying down this weekend and start picking up speed. 

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

Rain

We got about 4.5" the last 3 days. The bunkers are destroyed and we will be able to start working on them tomorrow. 

We needed rain...just not that much. 

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

Greens aeration

We verticut, mowed, top dressed and aerified with a small solid tine today. I wanted to remove some of the grass off of them with the verticut. The thicker and grassy they get, the more you have to do to keep speeds up and it also is less healthy for the plant.

Looking good now. Should heal over by the end of the week. 

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

Forward tees

We will be resodding some of the forward tees on Wednesday. Good sod was hard to come by when we were installing them, and the only decent stuff was over seeded. Once the rye started to die off there wasn't much bermuda (this is on reason we don't overseed the golf course).

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

Bunkers

This is what most of the bunkers looked like on Friday evening. I had to skip bunkers on Saturday so we could have enough guys to mow greens, setup, mow tees, finish spraying, hand water greens, and mow + blow the intermediate cut. 

It's a shame that we can't skip bunkers for a single day because no one can rake a bunker. 

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