October 15, 2017

Update of condition of the greens on numbers 3, 5, 9, 17 and practice green.  These greens have been showing stress for 3 weeks now and raising the mowing height and cessation of rolling has not improved them.  We went ahead and pulled cores on Monday and topdressed on Wednesday so we could incorporate seed into the thin areas.  We had previously punched them with solid tines and applied additional fertilizer along with our regular program to fill in these areas.  Having greens that are not responding to fertilizer this time of year is very unusual.  They are behaving as if it is the middle of August. 

Certainly we were aggressive with mowing heights and roller frequency following our fall aeration leading up to our October events in an effort to achieve green speed. Temperatures reaching 90 combined with high humidity and nighttime temps in the upper 70’s may have predisposed us to some fungus even though we were on our normal fungicide preventative schedule. Whether this caused the thinning or some overlap with the greens sprayer is still yet to be determined.  We are being vigilant and are taking whatever steps we feel necessary to hasten the recovery of these greens.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns about this issue.

Sincerely,

Rob Wilmans

Golf Course Superintendent

Course UPDATE:

On Monday we aerated the putting greens so I wanted to run through the procedure we used, the work we contracted out and what we hope to achieve throught the process.  We began the day at 5:45am when I walked our aerator over to number 13 with our mechanic Randy to make sure the machine would pull plugs like we wanted it to.  We used a ½” tine on a 2 inch square spacing about 3.5 inches deep.  We pulled tons of material out of the greens and collected it all in a box attached to the rear of the aerator.  The box would then deposit the pile at the edge of the green when we picked up the machine to turn around.  The staff then began the long grueling day of picking those plugs up with shovels and loading them into utility carts.  12 hours of shoveling plugs is a brutal day of labor, many thanks to the crew for doing such a great job!!  This is what the greens look like once they are cleaned off.

Next we brought in a contractor to drill and fill 6 of our greens that drain the worst.  The machine drilled 8 inch deep holes, 1 inch in diameter on a 6 in square pattern.  After drilling the hole they would open a tube that filled the hole with dried sand that we supplied.  We used almost 16,000 lbs of bagged sand that more of my crew had to carry to the machine, lift over their heads and then put in the hopper!!  More awesome work by the staff!!  Once this was done we then ran our machine behind them pulling the regular cores.

After all of this we sanded the entire green with a top dresser and then drug the sand until we filled the aeration holes with new clean sand.  Once across with the roller and one more drag with a mat and we had a finished product.  This week we will spot topdress, drag and roll to smooth the greens, we will wait until Monday to start mowing again.

What do we hope to gain by all of this??  Our goal is to create a clean sand “chimney” from the top of the green down into the original sand that the greens were built from.   Over the years a layer of organic material has built up in the top of the green that prevents air and water movement.  The drill and fill will create deeper wider channels to move the water off the tops of the greens.  The finished product was not as intrusive as I had expected and a few weeks it will all be a distant memory.  Thank you to the members for allowing me to tear up your beautiful greens so they can be healthy in the long run, and thank you to all of my staff for working so hard!!