REST & RECOVERY OF THE GREENS

BY KURTIS WOLFORD GOLF COURSE SUPERINTENDENT

Where has the year gone?

We are rolling into July and it looks like Mother Nature will be ramping up the heat early this month with our first 100-degree day of the year. We have been lucky so far this season. Now that we hit the summer solstice, the days will start getting shorter. Let’s hope we do not have a repeat of last year’s August and September heat waves!

The course performed well for the two invitationals. We pushed the greens hard last week. By Saturday they were starting to show signs of being pushed. Greens speeds ramped up from the first day from 11ish to averaging 12.3. We will be giving the greens some love this month and also giving them a break to recover with needle tineing followed by a gypsum application and sand topdress. Greens speeds will be dropping back down to 10-11ish as we get into the summer heat of July and August.

We will spraying rough again this week. We have noticed in surrounding areas where we lost trees the predominate turf was

Poa annua because of the shade. Now that the trees are gone the Poa annua is struggling. We plan to seed these areas with Rye/ Blue grass. We have also seen this year it the return of Southern Blight Fungus. It is hitting Poa annua in the rough and fairways hard this year, primarily because of the wet spring we have had. Where Southern Blight has killed an area of Poa, Bermuda grass pops up and starts filling in the bad area. We have been spray fertilizing heavily to constantly feed the Bermuda that sprouts up in these areas. We continue to have labor issues. Today we are at 19 full-time employees including myself and 2 part-time employees. We are budgeted for 21 full-time and 2 part-time. We are still down 2 full-time employees. I will be putting an add out starting today. In the meantime, we are making due

Mowing frequencies

• Greens 7 days per week with Triplex

• Rolling 1x 2x Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, & Sunday

• Collars & tees 2x per week

• Fairways 2x per week

• Rough 2x per week

We continue to make daily adjustments on the irrigation system. The crew will continue to be changing our heads on the Lake. We have been injecting wetting agents and nitrogen into the irrigation water at night to help the turf and to reduce hand watering.

The installation of the new heads is paying dividends in being able to apply a uniform application of water. Fairway conditions continue to improve. Once fine-tuned we are spending much less time hand watering dry spots in fairways.

Course safety

PLEASE DO NOT USE THE CART PATHS AS A RECREATIONAL WALKING TRAIL WHEN THE COURSE IS OPEN.

It is too dangerous for walkers and for those who are not familiar with the course. If you see walkers, please kindly ask them not to walk the cart paths because of the danger.