3rd week in a row

The Thursday's men's group got crushed again in the weekly walking contest. That's the 3rd week in a row that the Wednesday ladies group has won. Some greens you can see every step someone took on and off the green. Pick um up!

Hoses

Can't wait to put these things up for the year! Another 2 months.

We have to water the edges more than the rest of the greens. It's the newness in them - they dry down so much faster. New greens are sweet most of the year, but cause me to pull my hair out for 3 months of the year.

Greens

Greens look pretty good. They are still a little wet from a flush on Sunday night.

The only edges that are a little thin are on #5,12&13. We knew we would still struggle with the edges in the second year but the problems are about 5-10% of what they were last year. These temps have really helped. If this continues, I will start to speed them up a little. You still have to be a little careful through August, especially with the young age. They could use another light topdressing. I might try to do that later this week. The topdressing keeps air to the roots, firms them up and increases greens speed.

Irrigation vs not

Pictured is a great pic of some Bermuda on the right side of the cart path on #3. We sodded this area a year or two ago and you can see a perfect circle from what gets hit by irrigation.

Missing water

Mike and I were on a mission to find 50 gallons a minute of water coming from the pumpstation for the last couple of days. We started by isolating half the course and seeing if it stopped....then we worked backwards from there. Took a while but we found it in the no mow on #8 next to a drain.

Bermuda collars

The Bermuda collars were really knocked back the last couple of weeks. It was from the growth regulator applications that are made on the greens.

We were spraying them "choppy" like you can see in the second picture all winter and spring. Once the collars were completely grown in and healthy I made one application without spraying choppy. It knocked the crap out of the Bermuda. We spray the same chemical on tees and fairways and double the rate that these collar areas got from the overspray. We have since gone back to spraying them choppy. This is a pain because we mix the regulators with other products like fungicides and fertilizers. The edges of the greens that don't get sprayed have to be hit with a separate mix without the growth regulators (they still need fungus protection) with a different machine. We are one of the only places around that have to do this. Most guys just spray the entire green and don't ever experience this amount of setback in the Bermuda. I'm not sure why ours is so sensitive. May have something to do with the relative newness of the Bermuda around greens after the renovation. It just takes more time, money and chemicals to do it the "choppy" way.

Pick em up!

Thursday men's group officially lost the walking on greens challenge for the week!