Turf Talk

BY SHAWN GILL | GOLF COURSE SUPERINTENDENT

I hope everyone has been enjoying the extended spring weather as much as I have! The cool nights and dry air have done wonders to help us present tight, firm conditions. These weather conditions also make it favorable for us to apply growth regulators that have a strong effect on the high annual bluegrass populations in the fairways and greens so that the bentgrass (the desirable species) can become more dominant. Simply put, you should have stronger and better playing surfaces throughout the rest of the year. The best part of all might be that the nice weather allows me to sleep a little more soundly at night.

This time of year is also the busiest for us. On top of trying to give you the best golf course conditions possible, we’ve got flowers to plant, weeds to kill, vegetables to grow for our wonderful chef and his team to use in their creative dishes, and a number of outings where some non-members get to experience what you enjoy on a daily basis. Along with help from the rest of the team, our lead gardener, Julio Madrid, does an amazing job of constantly providing colorful flowers and ornamental plants that add to the beauty of the Club.

One aspect of this spring that has changed from previous seasons is that the course has remained closed on all nonouting Mondays. The entire Greens Department now works from 5:30 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. on those days to make the best use of the time you have given us. Recently we have used the time to keep up with mowing practices that result in more consistent conditions for the rest of the week. We’ve been able to mow all rough prior to Tuesday member play. By Friday it is ready for touch up mowing around fairways and greens so that the weekend warriors should have nice lies when they hit a slightly errant shot. As hotter weather begins to move in, we will use the time to aerate and water fairway areas that always seem to suffer as the soil dries and hardens. We hope that this will result in fewer cart path only times during the dog days of summer.

One of the priorities we’ve set for this year is to provide more consistent bunker conditions. We have implemented some strategies, such as extra raking after rain to help dry the sand and regular measuring of rake penetration depths so that our multiple bunker rakes create similar surfaces. We will be adding sand to deficient bunkers over the next few weeks as another tool to build consistency. Only the fairway bunker on #8 has significantly compromised drainage, and we will be stripping out all the sand and replacing it with clean sand after clearing the drains. We hope these efforts will improve everyone’s bunker play (although I think my bunker shots need more help than these changes can provide).

As I do in each article, I’d again like to throw a big shout out to your Maintenance team. Under the leadership of our Foreman, Jose Barahona, the crew works like family, helping each other and working together like no maintenance operation I have seen during my career. They take immense pride in what they do for you all! 