Why mats?

With damp, dreary conditions last Thursday, we chose to move the practice tee hitting from grass to the mats for the day.  If some question whether this was necessary or not--and one person clearly did--a quick look at this picture may explain why we made the call:

We had aerified and overseeded the tees on Monday, and as you can see, whoever opted not to stay on the mats, caused as much damage from their feet as they did with their club.  

While we may not always get things right, there is generally a sound basis for the decisions the Pro Shop and Grounds staff make when it comes to protecting the golf course.

Reducing the Risk

Most everyone who has worked on a golf course for any length of time has had to deal with a dreaded four letter word:  Leak.  

While irrigation leaks aren't any fun, the other kind of leak--hydraulic--can cause long-lasting problems.  In an effort to minimize the risk of turf loss due to hydraulic leaks on the putting surfaces, we recently acquired a hybrid riding greensmower.  (This was another mower we had ordered in 2023.)

Unlike a traditional triplex mower (which uses hydraulics for steering, driving wheel motors, raising and lowering the cutting units, as well as turning the reels) the new machine has no hydraulics at all.  Is this mower 100% risk free?  No, it does have a small gasoline engine to power the generator.  Of course, so do the walking handmowers we use, and they are considered to be very low risk machines.   

As to the price of this machine, there's an old saying, "Whatever you think it costs, add a zero if it's built for golf."  So, yes, you could drive this nice looking mower, or you could drive a very well-appointed Audi A6 for the same price.

A good start to the week!

Just when we thought it might be 2026 (Knocking Down Nasty Natives, and Head-Scratching Supply Chain Issues) before we received the equipment ordered back in 2023, we were greeted by a truck carrying our two long-awaited mowers. 

Yes, 27 months to the day after ordering them, they finally arrived.  While neither of these are used for mowing the Native areas, they will help to free up our Ventrac for that job, as we will once again have a dedicated machine for trimming tee and green surrounds.

Knocking Down Nasty Natives, and Head-Scratching Supply Chain Issues

As you may notice when playing the course, we have begun the process of mowing down the Native areas.  This year's heavy spring rains, followed by a whole lot of summer heat led to a wonderful growing environment for weeds.  Our pre-emergent herbicide applications lost their efficacy more rapidly, and keeping up with the plethora of weeds was nearly impossible.  Coincidentally, the USGA just released an article that addresses this issue:  Why Are the Naturalized Areas So…Natural?

The native mound separating #6 and #13 has been cut down.

Unfortunately, due to lingering supply chain issues, we won't be able to get this mowing process completed quickly.  Our versatile Ventrac, which is used for mowing down the Natives has been forced to work double-duty this year.  For most of the week we have to use this machine with a different mowing deck for trimming around green and tee complexes.  Therefore, there is only a day or two that we can work on cutting down the high grass.

Why do we need to use the Ventrac around the tees and greens?  Well, we ordered a replacement trim mower for use in these areas on June 15, 2023.  Prior to ordering we asked about the lead time and were told, "You're looking at 8 to 10 months, that may change as supply chain issues ease..."  

Change it did, but not in the way we were hoping for.  Had that timeframe been accurate, our existing trim mower would have lasted until its replacement arrived.  However, that was off just a bit (sarcasm intended), as we are now at 27 months--three times the estimate--and still don't have that piece of equipment (in addition to another mower that was ordered at the same time).  The old trim mower's frame is broken in half, rendering it unusable, thus making the Ventrac the only option we have.    

Still waiting for your replacement...

Until that new trim mower arrives, we will continue picking away at the Native areas as time allows.

Bentgrass Bounce Back

If you recall, last week we were staring at some fairways that had gotten pretty banged-up from aerification.  As a reminder, here's what #5 looked like at the time:

While the irrigation system allows us to get by for a while, there is no substitute for the uniformity we got from the steady rain earlier in the week.  Additionally, going from high temperatures in the 90s, to the 70s makes a world of difference in turf recovery.  #5 fairway looks just a little different now than it did a week prior:

Looking ahead, there are no days forecast to be in the 90s.  This summer was just plain tough on the turf, so let's hope the weather prognosticators are correct!

This actually helps the turf?

In looking at the fairways immediately following this past week's aerification, it certainly doesn't appear that we were trying to improve course conditions and turf health.  By the time we got to #5 on Monday, the 90+ degree temperature and low humidity that day had things drying out extremely fast, causing turf to wilt.

You can see that the small skips between aerifier passes actually look much healthier than the surfaces where plugs were pulled.  So why do we put these low mow turf areas through such torture--you have to wonder, is the juice really worth the squeeze?

It's during times like this that you need to take a step back and keep in mind that aerification is like major surgery to a person.  The long-term benefits--in this case decreased organic matter and compaction, increased pore space and percolation rate--far outweigh the short-term stress that this procedure causes.

Would this aerification be advisable under all circumstances? Probably not, but fortunately Laurel Creek's 35 year old fairways are still virtually Poa annua free, and the Bentgrass will bounce back.  Had this been a stand of Poa, we very well may have been ordering a few bags of seed or pallets of sod to restore these areas.

Looking at the low...

While we are now back in the oven with temperatures in the 90s during heat wave number six, last week provided a welcomed respite from this tough summer weather.   Most of us focus on these daily high temperatures, however the nighttime lows can be equally important to the turf.  

Below is a chart showing the temperatures of #1 green at a 2" soil depth from the end of July through the first week of August.  Suffice it to say that when the "coolest" the rootzone gets is 80 degrees at night, there is pretty much zero chance of any recovery from the daytime heat.

In contrast to the end of July, the beginning of August actually had some daytime high soil temps peak at around 80 degrees, accompanied by much cooler nighttime low temperatures in the 60s.  This may have been just a quick break for the turf, but we will take it.