The job of a Greenkeeper isn't one for the faint of heart. The work days begin in the dark, and the weather can take its toll.
Yet there is something that attracts certain individuals to this vocation. Even with the hum of the mower, the early mornings are peaceful and tranquil as the golf course begins to awaken around you. So while it may not be an easy life to live, many of us wouldn't trade it for anything.
As part of our ongoing maintenance of the short game area, we will periodically be aerifying it using solid tines (which do not remove a core). This is typically considered a fairly non-invasive procedure which won't be noticed by golfers after just a couple of days.
When the aerifier hits a rock and it is heaved up as shown below, it's typically not a big deal. But, we occasionally will get one wedged between two tines, or even have a buried golf ball get speared by a tine. When that occurs, the not so invasive solid tining can quickly start plowing up some turf. Because of this, we have changed the operation to a two person job--one team member operates the machine, and the second acts as a spotter, walking behind the aerifier and making sure there's no torn turf.
While the majority of rocks we ran into are like the one shown above (somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a baseball), we did find a nice 15 pounder. After hitting this large rock with the aerifier, we probed around to see what we were dealing with beneath the surface.
It was then that our Equipment Technician, Don Robel, made a seemingly contradictory, yet quite accurate statement: "It's shallow, but deep!"
With any luck, after going over this area a dozen times with our aerifier, we will have either broken up, or removed all of the major obstacles from below, and it can once again become a single person task.
The Men's Member-Guest Tournament this past week is always one of the year's premier events, and we strive to have everything dialed in on the course. Unfortunately, the weather is definitely not in our control, and any efforts for firm conditions vanished Thursday morning when the storm dumped close to 1.5" of rain on us.
Part of our leadup preparation for the greens was a dusting of sand at the beginning of the week to help smooth them out.
There were a couple of positive things which were in our control. Despite all of the rain, green speeds were still fairly good. Leading up to the event, in addition to the light topdressing, a healthy dose of growth regulator was applied to the greens, along with several days of double-mowing and rolling. When somebody has cut over an acre of greens and only has this quantity of clippings to show for it, the greens are right where we want them.
Another notable thing was the continued benefit we see with the Matrix lined bunkers. #6 green was one of the first we did, close to a decade ago, and it still drains flawlessly.
We certainly are looking forward to completing the rest of the bunkers on the course this fall, and being able to list our pumps for sale on TurfNet!
The Annual Bluegrass Weevil continues to be the biggest insect threat to the fine turf on the golf course. With Bentgrass being less susceptible to damage than Poa annua, we typically allow the year's first generation of weevils to act as a biological control of Poa on tees and fairways. As you can see below, the weevils have the Poa looking pretty pretty beat up:
Above you can see that we are finding larvae, pupae, and callow adults present at this time. As most insecticides specifically target either adults or larvae, once the weevils are found at all life cycle stages, at the same time, control becomes even more challenging.
