Course Update 6/25/19

Last night's storms dropped 1.53" of rain that washed out all the bunkers again and left the courses with standing water in many areas.  That brings our monthly total to 7.59" and 16.06" since May 1st.  Tees, fairways, and approaches were too wet to mow this morning, but we mowed greens, changed cups, cleaned up debris, and started repairing bunkers.  Since all the bunkers washed we decided to perform some much needed edging and other maintenance.  The forecast for the remainder of the week looks favorable, with warmer temps and dry conditions which will help the courses dry out.

A lot of water was moving thru the property this morning.  About 8" is covering the spillway from the lake below the clubhouse.

Repairing the bunkers is a time-consuming process and the first step is scraping up the silt and other debris to keep it from contaminating the sand.  "Dirty Sand" doesn't drain well and will eventually result in inconsistent playing conditions.

Here the staff is string trimming the grass around the perimeter of the bunker then blowing out the debris, followed by raking the edges.

This bunker is ready to be spun by the ride-on bunker machines.

We continue to find drain lids in both fairways and roughs that are grown over and unable to remove water from the surface.

This drain was covered for so long the soil resembles the shape of the slots and the roots grew down thru the lid.

Here's a side shot of the sod that was removed.  It's approximately 1.5" thick and the drain lid came off when the sod was pulled up due to the amount of roots present.

Course Update 6/20/19

It's been another week of wet weather, almost 2.7" since 6/13.  That brings us to 5.48" so far in June, and nearly 14" since May 1st!  I can't remember the last time I worked on a property that was this wet for this length of time.  As mentioned in last weeks post, we're doing our best to maintain the courses given the current conditions.  Mowing greens is performed daily since they're sand based and drain well.  Unfortunately, repairing bunkers also seems to be a daily occurrence.  Tees were walk mowed on Wednesday since they're too wet to support the normal riding mowers, and we're planning to walk mow approaches tomorrow as long as we don't get too much rain tonight.  Fairways haven't been mowed since last Friday, and probably won't be mowed until next week.  The smaller, articulating rough mowers have been out all week and are making good progress with minimal impacts.  We haven't been able to send out the larger rough units for fear of them sliding into a bunker or pond, and causing major damage.  Since we're unable to perform our regular mowing practices, we've stayed busy with detail work such as string trimming around trees, pond and creek banks, edging around and cleaning off irrigation heads and drains, daily filling of tee divots, and pruning low hanging branches over cart paths.  We also started replacing the rubber mats covering the steps on the Lakes side driving range tee, similar to what we did on Lakes 2.

Let's hope the weekend forecast holds true and we get some much needed sunshine and lower humidity to start drying out!

Course Update 6/13/19

Heavy storms hit again Monday night dropping 1.35" of rain and washing out all the bunkers.  Fortunately, there wasn't any hail and only minor debris to clean up.  It seems like that's the pattern we're stuck in and for every few nice days we get hammered with severe storms.  Not counting the rain this afternoon, we've received 2.8" of rain so far in June.  Our monthly average is 4.15" and we're not halfway thru the month yet.  Going back to May 1st, we've received 11.25" of rain over 43 days, which is almost one third of our total yearly precipitation.  We're making the best of it and trying to schedule maintenance activities based on the forecast.  For instance, on Monday we verticut, mowed, and topdressed Grove greens again because we still saw some depressions from the hail damage two weeks ago.  The forecast called for rain Monday night, which worked out perfectly to wash the sand in.  On Monday we also core aerified, topdressed, seeded, and dragged the back driving range tee on the Orchard side to speed up divot recovery.  One of our goals this year was to improve the condition of the tees given their age and increased usage.  Other activities this week include spraying tees and greens, fertilizing tees, repairing an irrigation leak on Grove 6 fairway, trimming around and cleaning off irrigation heads, drains, valve boxes, and yardage markers in fairways/rough, and refurbishing the steps to the silver tee on Lakes 2.

This is how much material was removed after verticutting the practice green on Monday.  Topdressing sand will settle into the turf canopy and fill in where this organic material used to be.

Here's the practice green after topdressing on Monday.  It appears heavier than it really is, and one time around with the drag brush is all that is required to move the sand off the putting surface.

Core aerifying the back driving range tee on the Orchard side to relieve compaction and allow for better infiltration of water and nutrients.

Here's the range tee with a heavy topdressing over the aerification plugs.  After topdressing we spread a generous amount of seed to help with divot recovery and to fill in thin areas.

Here's the tee after dragging to break up the aerification plugs and work the topdressing sand and seed into the aerification holes and low spots.  The material remaining on the surface is thatch from the aerification plugs that will be blown off.  We expect to see germination in 5-7 days and this tee should be fully recovered in 3-4 weeks.

Another one of our projects this week was replacing a ductile iron tee on a 4" irrigation mainline.  Of course the leak was right in the middle of the fairway and about 2.5 feet deep, so we needed a large hole to work in.  The smaller pipe coming out of the tee is a 2" lateral line that supplies water to the irrigation heads in the rough above the fairway bunkers.  The green hose is the suction line for a trash pump to remove the water coming into the hole.

This is the underside of the 4" tee that was leaking.  Like most things in the ground for over 20 years, the casing of the tee was deteriorating and the rubber gasket started to push out of the tee from the pressure of the irrigation system.  These types of repairs are becoming more common given the age of our irrigation system.

David Farr is removing the old rubber mats from the steps on Lakes 2 that were falling apart and created a safety hazard.  The steps were then sprayed with an anti-microbial cleaning agent and power washed to remove the grime that had accumulated over the years.  New rubber mats have been ordered and will be installed as soon as possible to make the steps much safer.

Course Update 6/4/19

Thank you to the maintenance staff for all their hard work last week during some of the worst weather we've seen in years.  Also, thank you to the membership for your patience and understanding during that same time.  We received 5.8" of rain from Saturday, 5/25 thru Thursday, 5/30, then another 1.1" of rain Saturday night into Sunday morning.  Unfortunately, the heavy rain Saturday night washed out all the bunkers again and left a lot of debris.  We started the cleanup process yesterday along with mowing greens, tees, some approaches, and rough.  There are numerous areas throughout the courses that still have standing water, but the recent dry, cool weather is helping to remedy that.  Today we're mowing fairways for the first time since last Monday, continuing on rough, and repairing bunkers. 

During the month of May, we received 8.5" of rain over 20 days, while our average rainfall is only 4.4" for the month.  Year to date that puts us 5.26" over our average precipitation and we've had measurable rain events 55 days so far this year.