From the eyes of a Superintendent

While out on the course yesterday I found a couple interesting items I would like to share with everyone. Once in a while you find one of those situations where you just have to shake your head and walk away such as the golfer parking his cart off the cart path right in front of a newly constructed turn out, built to prevent just that. Many time bunkers will reveal activities from the day before and even the night before. Just last month Jorge was coming to work and witnessed a coyote running across the street toward the course with not one but two chickens in his mouth.
Later that morning while raking the bunkers he noticed a large pile of sand with a chicken foot sticking out. He kicked it over and reveled a whole chicken. I guess that coyote bit off more than he could chew and thought he could come back later and finish this one off another day. He obviously didn't understand the rules of golf. Kind of like this golfer (above) after making their shot on eighteen. It looks like they made their shot and proceeded to swoosh the sand around with their foot, (kind of like the pro's do on TV), only their caddy forgot to come back and rake it out. Notice where the rake is. One more step and it could have been done with less effort than doing it with their shoe. When I saw this I had to take a picture of it.

Speaking of imitating what the pros do on TV. Here is another example of what some golfers will do. Many times pro's will repair a ball mark or dent on the green by placing the tool next to the mark and will pull it from the bottom up instead of pushing from the outside and in. When this is done incorrectly it will leave a dome in the grass and the next morning the mower will scalp off the mark and leave a big dirt spot like in the first picture shown. The following slides will describe the process that I did to repair the mark correctly but will also apply to the proper repair of a mark on the green.

The first thing I had to do was take out a small plug of sand and I then made a small hole with my finger. With the ball mark repair tool I pushed in from the outside of the mark until the hole was filled in. Many times you can simply push in a hole with out removing a plug.) By doing this we have essentially brought the roots and the tissue back to the center of the hole giving the green the opportunity to heal quickly and reduce the chances of Poa seeds from germinating in the open soil.