Early mornings.

Nice sunrise over #1.

Approaches

The approaches were topdressed with this rocky sand on Tuesday. I used this sand because the stuff we usually use was unavailable and my other options were a little too expensive for approaches. This course sand will be really good for the approaches once it gets worked in. The course material provides better drainage and increased firmness. It should be gone in another 4-5 days.

Flowers

Lynda does a great job with all the flowers and plants on the course and the clubhouse.

Spraying

We are spraying greens this morning with a few different products. This is a soil spray that gets the fungicide down in to the soil, along with the nutrients that we have in the tank. This is accomplished by watering in the spray immediately after application.

Walk spraying the greens is extremely labor intensive. We do this to prevent putting tire tracks on the greens. This also eliminates any wear from a heavy sprayer - we have to do everything we can to help eliminate additional traffic on new greens.

Topdressing

The greens are going to be a little rough for the next couple of days. The sand hasn't dried down enough to drag it in yet. Once we are able to drag we will roll again to start smoothing everything out.

Not looking good

Trying to finish the 1000 things we have to do today and this is what the radar looks like.

We can do some of the aeration in the rain but most of it we can't. Application of all the nutrients and topdressing needs to be dry put down. If we can't finish the front 9 today we'll have to completely close tomorrow. I'm glad we started last night!

So.....How they doing? Well here it is.

I have been getting this question quite often in the past month or so.  Believe me when I say….good.  I know it’s hard to understand after looking at some of the outsides of some of these greens, but I ask you to focus your inspection to the center of the greens.  The majority of each green is in fantastic shape, with the exception of these outsides and to an untrained eye, those outsides really jump out at you.  Just look at this picture of 13 I took this evening – and that’s one of the worst greens out there.  Look past the first 6’……..great shape and really healthy.

There are a few reasons that these new greens struggle with maintaining good collars and cleanup laps their first year of existence.  The first and most important is no thatch.  Most people think of thatch as a bad thing, and it is something that most courses battle to keep in check, but it is still really important especially on new greens.  This thatch acts as a shock absorber for wear and traffic.  Without any thatch there is no cushion to absorb the traffic – kind of like driving a car without any shocks – you’re going to feel every bump.  Without having this protection the highest traffic areas (which are the edges of the greens because of feet, mowers, rollers, etc) tend to struggle towards the end of the summer.  There are a few other reasons why these areas struggle on new greens but IT’S NORMAL THE FIRST YEAR.

We knew we would have a difficult first year with these greens, even before the start of construction.  We decided to keep a short window for construction to limit the amount of time that the course would be closed.  The Fazio guys came in here and said that we should open no earlier than the middle of July, but we knew that wouldn’t work and we could do better than that.  We did open in May, even after a terrible winter and early spring and we knew we would struggle a little through the first year until the greens had time to develop some maturity.  We struggled a little with some of the outsides……but the greens stayed in great shape – for the most part – throughout a really, really, really wet year. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is…….don’t worry…..we’re good.  Believe me, I’m not normally the calm voice of reason when dealing with bentgrass greens in this area, but we’re in good shape.  I was sleeping like a baby through most of this summer…and that’s saying something.  In a normal summer with our old greens (usually July and August) I didn’t exactly log too many sound asleep hours - waking up in the middle of the night worrying about grass….my wife thinks there’s something wrong with me.

These are normal growing pains that every course goes through, to one extent or another.  I like to tell people it’s like building a new house and installing all new landscaping and sod.  You really don’t get the full effect of the money you put in until a couple years down the road once everything has had a chance to root and mature, but eventually you can see why you spent all that money upfront.  You spent a lot of money on these greens…..but not for the first 4 -5 months….you spent the money for the next 20 years.

If anyone has any questions…pick up the phone and call me or shoot me an email.  I’d be happy to explain what we have going on and even take a quick ride around the course to look at some stuff if you want.

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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