Summer Recovery

Here is a great link from the USGA concerning this past summer and the transition into winter here across Florida. Our fairway are making great strides and improving from their weakened state due to the rough summer and fall we had. Enjoy!


USGA Green Section

It's been a while...TPC Eagle Trace Course Update

Dear Members,

            Dear Members,

Greens rolling smooth and true

            It’s hard to believe we are full swing into the golf season and Christmas/ New Year’s is right around the corner! While the holiday season has snuck up on us, there has been a lot happening at TPC Eagle Trace over the last few months!  The departure of Heritage Golf Group and the addition of Century Golf Partners/ Arnold Palmer Golf as well as hosting the Final Stage of Champions Tour Qualifying School in November have certainly kept us busy. Much has gone on and I feel the club has come through in good shape and we are poised for much improvement in the future.

            Here at Golf Course Maintenance we are full in to our “In-Season”/ wintertime cultural practices. While we have made it to the winter months, the weather lately has not been our typical South Florida winter.  The warm day and night temperatures coupled with high humidity have led to some much needed growth in the fairways but have also produced some challenges with disease and algae pressure on the greens.

            Some of our winter maintenance practices include monthly, instead of twice monthly, light topdressing on greens. We lower the frequency of the topdressing to limit the damage to the turf which doesn’t grow as much in the winter. We also mow the greens at higher heights of cut to allow for more leaf surface to harness the light from the sun, which there is less of in the winter, to make food. We will roll the greens more frequently to counter act the higher mowing heights which helps keep the green speeds remain where we want them. We have also been able to complete two full mowing cycles on the main rough and the outside St. Augustine rough on a weekly basis. We continue to mow the fairways, tees, and approaches three times a week. We will also be implementing more frequent fertilizing of the fairways and tees utilizing lighter application rates.

            Lately I have been getting questions as to why we don’t overseed the golf course like some of the other courses around South Florida. Aside from the fact it is a done purely for aesthetic purposes, it actually hinders the play ability of the golf course. This is the main reason we discontinued the practice when we were still with the PGA Tour. There is also a substantial cost associated with the practice due to purchasing seed, copious amounts of water use, preemergent herbicide applications for the non-overseeded areas, and additional labor just to name a few. Don’t forget, due to the heavy watering needed to get the new grass established, the golf course would need to be played under Cart Path Only conditions for two to three weeks.  Perennial ryegrass is the cool season grass most used to overseed in South Florida and our normal climate here does not provide the optimum growing environment for this grass. To successfully overseed, you must have the cooperation of Mother Nature. The warm temps and high humidity we have seen recently is more suited to the Bermudagrass that blankets our golf course.  If we had overseeded lately, the ryegrass would have become weak and then taken over by the Bermuda. We’d then be left with both species being weak when the weather returns to the normal cooler, drier days we are used to in the wintertime.  The end result would be having had our play ability affected even more so than not overseeding at all. These are some of the more prominent reasons for not overseeding here at the club.

A new day dawns over ET

In closing, I would like to thank everyone for their patience over the last few months as we made the transition to Century Golf. We have been instituting a new culture here around GC Maintenance and the future is looking bright for the golf course and the club as a whole. I hope everyone has noticed the vast improvement to the course conditions and rest assured we will continue to improve and maintain the course to the higher standard you as members crave and deserve. As always feel free to stop me on the golf course or contact me here at Golf Course Maintenance if you have any questions at all regarding anything going on around the club. I hope everyone has a Joyous and safe Holiday Season and a Happy 2013.

Oh and I almost forgot, after a short absence from posting content on the site  we will be putting pictures and other goodies up on our Golf Course Maintenance Blog. Feel free to follow us at http://tpcgm12.blogspot.com/ for some good stuff in the upcoming months.

Take care,

Skip Connolly | Golf Course Superintendent
TPC Eagle Trace
Tel: 954.344.5635

Fax: 954.341.4562
wconnolly@tpceagletracegc.com
www.tpceagletrace.com

SkipConn@twitter.com