This year's tee work was completed last week. One of the much needed improvements was the rebuilding of the Honors tee on #16. While we still wouldn't call it a huge tee, it has doubled in area, and is no longer the size of a postage stamp.
The Palmer/Champion tee on #14 also got releveled.
While we would always prefer seeding to sodding surfaces, given the timing of this project, we opted for some store bought grass.
Given the hole locations for this past Saturday's tournament, many players may have been uttering expletives directed at the Grounds team. However, we can't take credit for these.
No, the diabolical pin placements were not selected by the grass-growers, but chosen by the Pro Shop staff. So the next time you see Bob and Brett, be sure to let them know how much you truly enjoyed their sense of humor!
Of course we did add a few obstacles and distractions ourselves:
When changing cups, it can often be challenging to find a small paint dot on a green, indicating the hole location. However, in this case it was pretty easy--we just walked to the area of each green where we would never ever consider putting a pin, and that's where the dot was...
Several tees are being improved this fall, starting with #2. The Champion/Palmer, and Medal tees are being combined into one large tee. This will eliminate the loss of usable teeing ground that we previously had at the front of the rear tee and back of the forward tee, along with picking up the area that was rough in between the two old tees.
As you stand on the new tee, it appears to be significantly longer than the old tees. However, the back of the tee and front of the tee are unchanged from the old tees. The fact that the new tee appears to be so large just shows how much unusable area there was in the past.
This additional teeing space will allow for greater flexibility in daily setup, as well as tee marker rotation for turf recovery.
For several weeks there have been a couple of small black spots on some greens. It wasn't until we actually started poking around, that we discovered the unusual cause.
While removing the turf covers last March, we apparently missed a few of the staples used to hold them in place over the winter.
Iron is often applied to the greens to give them a nice color (without stimulating growth), however it is well known that too much iron can temporarily turn the turf black. It looks like the rusty staple was overdosing this small area--mystery solved.
Fortunately none of our greensmowers ever had a run-in with this piece of metal throughout the growing season.
As we did last year, lightweight blowers have been placed on a handful of greens to help clear off any leaves that may have accumulated during the day. While we try to make a couple of loops around the course to clear them off with our backpack blowers, there are days when an hour after we are finished, it looks like we were never there.
Just a quick refresher on how to operate these:
1) Grab the blower
2) Pull the trigger (Can't get much easier than that!)
Here's a quick tip. Be sure to mark your ball before using the blower--as slick as the greens are now, even a slight breeze might start your ball rolling!
Many years it seems like we jump straight from summer to winter, so having what feels like a "real fall" with cool temperatures and blue skies is definitely appreciated. Of course we could use just one good rain event. While many parts of the country have been getting way too much precipitation, we certainly have not.
The brisk nights and shorter days help to reduce turf stress this time of year, but with clear skies, a nice breeze and low humidity, there is still a fair amount of moisture loss occurring.
Again, regardless of how good an irrigation system is, there is no substitute for the uniformity that comes from Mother Nature. A nice rain will evenly rehydrate the soil and go a long way towards allowing us to turn off the irrigation for the season.
Until then, we will likely continue to deal with the Goldilocks conditions of too wet here and too dry there that come with "artificial rain." While there are a number of fall projects we'd like to be working on, for now the team will continue to be dragging hoses.
As you have likely heard on the news, September was extremely dry in our region, down 80% from the average rainfall for the month. However, this dry spell has not prevented the appearance of worm castings on the tees and fairways.
