Post Issac/ General Course Update

Rough Mower Stuck in a Wet Area between 6/14

Well we survived Tropical Storm Isaac and all he brought with him. We ended up with over thirteen inches of rain when all was said and done and we had only a few branches, mostly smaller sized, which were cleaned up quickly. The worst part was actually after the storm passed and we received most of our rain late Sunday and early Monday. With all the rain, though, we missed two and a half days of mowing which set us back on our rough mowing as we are not able to mow the really wet areas but we are mowing everywhere we can with all three of our rough units. We were able to get the fairways, tees/ approaches and step cut mowed with minimal damage due to wet spots. I was pretty impressed with the drainage on the course overall and aside from some of the really wet areas we came out OK. You will continue to see some mess out there as we move forward from this huge weather event and we ask that you bear with us as we continue to get everything back in order.

Area on the front of 16 green with Bermudagrass Decline

New Shoots coming up along with the fertilizer wetting agent combo
on 18 green

Before the storm we we dealing with some spots on the front of 16 and the back left of 18. We noticed the spots looking like they were dry then the turf started to thin out. We discovered the irrigation heads were clogged and not applying water correctly. We corrected this problem but were left with areas struck with severe Bermudagrass Decline. We started a recovery program last week but the events of TS Isaac set us back a bit as it flushed all the nutrients and the fungicide we used from the greens, that and the lack of sunlight put us a little behind on our recovery.  We got right back to the recuperation of those areas on Tuesday. We applied Insignia fungicide to all the greens then applied granular fertilizer to the areas in need on Thursday. We will be applying fertilizer on a weekly basis to those areas in need, we well be rotating between a quick release fertilizer one week and an Urea based or slower release fertilizer the next week. We are currently on a 14 day rotation with the fungicides. We will continue to use this program until the spots have healed, we are hoping it will be no longer than a month. We have already been seeing new shoot growth in those areas and I have good faith our revitalization program will work out for us.

Area to the right of #2 fairway bunker right after being
brought down to step-cut height

Also some of you may have noticed we changed the area directly to the left of the fairway bunker on three. We decided to mow that area to step-cut height and will be softening the corner a little to make the fairway  a little wider there also. Our hope is to add a little more room in the landing zone while still keeping with the original fairway design. For those of you that don't know that fairway bunker has actually been reduced over the years, it originally extended to the right from where it ends now and there was hardly any grass between the bunker edge and the current fairway! A definite risk reward proposition when faced with that tee shot.

#2 Fairway bunker from behind

 Overall things are doing pretty good around the golf course, we hope to have all the rough caught up by the end of the holiday weekend and things will be ready for our aerification on Tuesday. This final aerification of the summer will be a deep, about 8" deep, punch with only a 1/2" diameter hole. This should lead to minimal disruption to the surface as we will be topdressing before hand and since we will be using a solid tine there will be no clean up aside from dragging the sand in from the top dressing. We will be open for business as usual on Wednesday and should be close to healed up by the weekend.

Areas on #18 Rough and Fairway that weren't able to be mowed
due to severe wetness!

I want to wish everyone a safe and fun holiday weekend and as always if you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me or flag me down on the course. Oh, and I almost forgot, good luck to all the college football watchers as the season kicks off tonight. I hope everyone's team comes out strong. I know I'm looking forward to my Spartan's coming out and taking it to Boise State on Friday! GO GREEN!