Dear Members,
Dear Members,
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| 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.
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| 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
TPC Eagle Trace
Tel: 954.344.5635
SkipConn@twitter.com
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