Green speeds

I have been steadily decreasing the height of cut the last week and the growth regulator we sprayed on Friday is finally kicking in. The greens have picked up about a foot in the last two days and will continue to increase. We will be verticutting then mowing on Monday instead of giving them their usual break on Monday. This verticutting will really stand everything up and speed them up. They should be really, really good by the end of the week.

Some of the thin areas haven't completely healed on the outsides - a result of a really hot September. They are close...close enough to not keep them from putting the gas petal to the floor on green speeds for the remainder of the year.

Hung head

Had a head stick on last night on 11. It's going to be real wet past that bunker today.

Dry!

I never thought I would say this in 2013 but it's getting really dry out there. The greens really dried out this afternoon. Hopefully this is the last of the heat this year.

Greens

The greens are starting to get good. We are going to apply the growth regulator tomorrow and the mowing heights continue to drop. They starting to really dry out and firm up.

Green speeds

The greens are going to be a little slower for the next couple of days. I fertilized them a little to promote recovery and try to get them filled in. We also need to spray a growth regulator on them but I think I'm going to wait until this 3 days of heat passes before putting it to them. They should really start to pick up pace towards the end of the week. The excess growth is good for recovery, bad for maintaining fast greens. The heights will start to come down and the rollers will once again be out there behind the mowers once we hit that cool weather.

Lines in fairways

We have some paint markings in the fairways and approaches. The fairway lines are marking new mowing patterns. We do this to try to change up or decrease the amount of grain in the fairways. I like to mark the lines to make sure that the guys keep straight mowing lines.

The lines in the approaches are marking where we sprayed pre-emerg up to. We use a different product around greens than we use on fairways, and we mark where the sprayer stopped to make sure there are no skips in poa control.

The Progression of #15 Green

Here is a slide show that shows the progression of #15 green since aeration.

I like to take pictures of areas like this on a regular basis...it helps me to see the progression.  It's hard to determine how fast they are recovering when you see them all day everyday, but as you can see from the pictures we are recovering.