Monday, August 10th, 2009

ConditionsI would say that the overall condition of the golf course remains the same. The absents of rain in July has definitely contributed to dryer and firmer fairways. The recent cooler weather has allowed us to conserve some water and focus on some of the dryer areas.

Greens
I knew we had a lot of grass on the greens but never imagined that we would get the amount of grass off that we did after we dethatched. We literally had an entire pickup load of grass on the compost pad by the end of the morning. Mike laid down the perfect amount of sand which filtered into the green nicely. I actually had a golfer ask me when we verticut. He was surprised when I told him it was the same morning.
With the Men's Club Championship coming this next weekend we will be focusing on getting the greens smooth and a little bit faster. We will lighten up on the water to firm them and do some extra rolling as well. My goal will be to have them around 10 to 10.5. We will keep the pins easy in order to keep the pace of play going.

Tees
Zeferino has been able to adjust and reset some sprinklers around the tee tops. There are still a few to go. What I am seeing are heads that are on a slope that need to be leveled or heads that have sunk below grade and need to be lifted in order to operate unobstructed.

Fairways
I have been seeing some improvement in the moisture level by running some multi-manual cycles on the hot spots in the morning. This cooler weather will allow us to actually turn the fairways off and spot water in the morning where it is needed most. By doing this we will hope to gain some level back in the irrigation pond.

Rough
The water is still off. As you can tell by the photo above a lot of the areas are completely brown. I am not to concerned in that I am confident that the fine fescue's will make a fast and complete recovery as soon as the rain returns.
Also, please note in the photo above the work of the crew this week in reshaping the bunker. We hope to get through all of them and reallocate the sand within them. Many faces are void of sand and by simply pushing the sand up from the bottom of the bunker we have been able to successfully reshape them without adding sand.

Personnel
The BBQ was a success. Gordon thank you for coming. Doug I am sorry you could not make it, Teddy enjoyed your T-bone for you. This has been a good year for the staff so far this year. The guys have been working very hard and have managed to complete many small projects. They all take a lot of pride in the course and it really shows.

Projects
The bridge project is finally complete and I am very happy with the outcome. I am confident that this should last for many years to come. While the bridge was out of service I had the guys go through and remove any alders that were obstructing or will soon obstruct the view of Green B. The result turned out great. You can't even tell they were there but now you can see the entire green from any tee.
We have begun to mow down some of the tall grass along the perimeters. We will be using the Counties flail mower which does a real good job. We will begin in earnest following the Men's Club Championship.
We mowed the bentgrass in the nursery this week! The rye/fescue blend is not quite ready yet.

Equipment
I have sent Lane all of the quotes and am waiting for him to issue the purchase orders. We have spent a few dollars on some pieces of equipment in order to maintain them in peak operating condition. The old core harvester needed two new belt rollers which to our surprise were $400 each and since Steve had it all apart to replace the bearings we felt it would save us time in the long run. We have been having some grief with our walking greens mowers mainly on 14B. For some reason the unit wants to scalp along the back left portion of the green. Steve has been pulling his hair out trying to figure it out. We found out that the mowers require a different bedbar when operating at heights lower than .125. Since we are currently at .105 we went ahead and purchased a more aggressive bedbar. It seemed to help a little bit but still doesn't look right. We have borrowed a new mower from Western Equipment to see if it is equipment related or simple the green that is causing the scalping. I will keep you posted on our progress.

Ball field
George has been taking some much needed time off and has laid low for the past few days. The fall ball season should be picking up later this month and into September. Pacific Sports Turf will be aerifing and topdressing the turf on the 16th and and 17th of this month. I will make sure that George picks up some seed to hit those areas that got burned out in the hot spell.