Bunker Pump

In an ideal world, bunkers would drain flawlessly and never require pumping to remove water.  However, realistically a bunker pump is a necessary piece of equipment for most golf courses.  Our old pump required two people to carry and a lengthy discharge hose which had to be rolled out and then gathered up after each bunker.

This year we replaced the old pump with a unit that one person can operate by themselves, and no hose is required.  The new pump attaches to the back of our 25 year old bunker machine.

While pumping bunkers is never a lot of fun, this piece of equipment is a huge improvement for us.


Our mechanic, Joseph, checks out the operation of our new bunker pump.

Fire Prevention

As you play the course this spring, you may notice a strip of sod across #2 fairway, and wonder what happened.  Here's the story:  Our tractor-mounted fertilizer spreader has a hitch under the spout.  I guess it's possible that you could use this hitch to tow a trailer of material to a site, then unhook it and begin using the spreader.  However, I've never known of anyone to put this hitch to use.

Unfortunately, as you can see below, we have found this part of the spreader cuts an excellent gouge into the turf when the spreader is on the ground and the tractor moves forward.  In a perfect world, the spreader would only be lowered to the ground for filling the hopper, and always be well off the ground as the tractor moves.  This may sound pretty simple, however the operator has a lot to keep track of--the speed of the tractor, the engine RPMs, his spacing between passes, the need to engage the tractor's differential lock or four wheel drive, etc. 

A bump of a lever can inadvertently lower the spreader, and voila, in a few seconds we have a pretty good dig mark.  So, that answers the question of why we needed to sod a strip on #2 fairway.  But here is the rest of the story.

While the accidental lowering of the spreader has happened only a couple of times over the years, it clearly creates a significant issue when it occurs.  Instead of putting out fires like this, we would prefer to practice some fire prevention.  To that end, our mechanic, Joseph, came up with a simple solution that will prevent us from having to deal with this headache in the future.

As you can see in the picture, Joseph attached an old mower roller and bracket to the back of the spreader.  If it gets too low, it can now safely glide along without causing any damage.  We always welcome innovative ideas that help the operation.  Great job, Joseph--that's one less fire we'll ever need to put out!

Winter Injury

The good news is that 99.9% of the green surfaces made it through this brutal winter without any lasting injury.  However, we're now seeing that 0.1% wasn't so fortunate.  The putting green at #1 tee has a low area where ice formed, and the Poa in this location didn't fare well under these conditions.

In order to help recovery, we have aerified, seeded, topdressed, and rolled this area.

The Bentgrass is green and healthy, having survived the winter much better than the Poa Annua.

Why was this the sole spot to have turf loss?  Ice is the short answer, but this green has other challenges which may have predisposed it to weakened grass, including growing environment, size, traffic volume and drainage.  We will monitor this area closely and take additional steps as warranted to aid in recovery. 
   

Bunker Etiquette

This may fall into the category of a picture being worth one thousand words.

A bunker is a hazard, and is intended to be penal.  However, it's truly adding insult to injury when your ball lands in a 2" depression left by someone's unraked footprint. 

Keep in mind that if your ball landed there, someone else's may as well--please be sure to leave the bunker raked smoothly for those that follow.

Practice Tee Expansion

When the weather finally breaks and you make it out to the course, one of the improvements you'll see is the expansion of the upper practice tee.  By having a retaining wall installed at the front of the tee, additional teeing ground was created.

We have sodded this area to one of the new, cold tolerant, Bermudagrass varieties, Latitude 36.  As we've seen on the lower practice tee, the Bermudagrass thrives in the heat.  With a quick recovery when it's hot, this will now allow more use of the upper tee during the summer months.

The crew is finishing some sod work on the front of the upper tee.

 

How Parts of a Green Spent This Winter May Influence Spring Growth

Golf course superintendents often discourage golfers from making comparisons between courses for a number of reasons.  Although two golf courses could be only a few miles apart, they may deal with many different factors including the number of rounds, variety of grasses they're managing, and growing conditions, such as the amount of sunlight, air movement, soil types, etc.

To take this a step further, even within an individual golf course, conditions can vary greatly.  People use the term "micro-climate" to describe a particular area which may differ from the rest of the course.  At Laurel Creek, #8 and #15 greens are a great example of this.  Although they are only 500' apart, the growing conditions are vastly different, with #15 receiving full sunlight and great air movement, while #8 sits down in a hole, and is consistently much hotter in the summer.

You might think that this is the level where varying growing conditions end.  However, as we come out of this winter, we're actually seeing a good deal of differences even within individual greens. 

So, why would the growing environment change from one part of a green to another?  Well, in the winter, a higher, mounded part of a green may lose its snow cover, and be subjected to more wind and desiccation.  A low swale in a green, might have been protected from these winds and be in better shape having spent much of the winter under a nice blanket of snow. 

However, in another scenario, over the winter some of these low areas of greens may have had the snow cover melt while the ground beneath was frozen.  If this melting water couldn't run off the surface before the next blast of cold weather, it often refroze, creating an ice layer on the surface--and ice is not a good thing for the health of greens in the winter.  In this situation, the low swale may be struggling come springtime.

What does this all mean for Laurel Creek's greens this spring?  While we haven't seen any signs of severe winter damage to the greens, the differing conditions that the putting surfaces had to deal with throughout the long, cold winter probably means we're going to have a brief period where some areas green-up before others.  Once we start seeing some consistent warmer weather, we expect that the turf growth will be more uniform.

Lastly, some have asked when we can expect to see green grass again.  The answer is in the two pictures below:

The top picture shows plugs taken from greens on March 11.  They were placed on a windowsill and wrapped in a moist paper towel.  The bottom picture is the same plugs six days later, on March 17.  So, what do we need for the course to green-up?  It looks like some consistent temperatures in the 60s will do the trick.  However, when we'll actually see those temperatures is the real question at this point.

What a Mess!

As the snow finally disappears, we're left with a big mess, thanks to the thousands of geese who decided to spend some time on the course this winter.  Unlike the handful of resident geese we see, who try to call this home year around, we were bombarded by a multitude of migratory birds. 

They will scare easily and take flight, but often circle around and land on another part of the course if they can't find someplace more inviting to spend the night.  We saw thousands of these geese this winter, and it seemed that as soon as one flock departed, another group must have seen a "Vacancy" sign, and come in the next day.

The good news is that, unlike in past winters, we've found little evidence of turf damage from the geese munching on the golf course grass.  The bad news is that these thousands of geese apparently were dining elsewhere then using the course as their private restroom.

We've started the cleanup process by focusing on the tees and greens, and are working out from there.  When the material is dry, it can be blown and picked up pretty easily.  Unfortunately, with the snow and rain, the droppings are far from dry, and are not at all easy to clean up.  Depending on what was for dinner, they may break apart, or simply smear like grease.

Goose droppings dot the surface of #13 green.