Finally a little rain but May looks cold

 

We are very thankful to be able to turn off the pumphouse for more than one day this week. The hot and dry pattern has changed but it is looking like May will turn out to be colder than April! We remain in a serious drought since the rain we have received this week is still lower than average. 

The picture above is from the storm that moved through this morning, that gave us just under a tenth. This makes the fourth storm this month, which brings our monthly total to 0.82”, well below our 3.63” April average for the area. Hopefully, this coming weekend brings some more but only in the evening. 

The Turfrad continues to help us use water as efficiently as possible. After a month with no rain and no humidity for that matter, only being down about 15" on the pond is pretty impressive. Even after a rain event the Turfrad can give us confidence to keep the irrigation off for an extra day while highlighting some smaller areas that are drying out faster and can be watered by hand, conserving more water.

Every irrigation shortfall on our property was exposed over the past month. One of those was intermittent communication out to the satellite boxes from the Maintenance Shop. James and Connor have now strung up an extra antenna on 9 to try and get a better signal back to the base station.

The drought not only impacts the turf but our bunkers as well. On a flat surface like the bottom of a bunker, capillary action can help keep sand moist at a depth of around 5 or 6 inches. On a slope however, like many of our bunker faces, the pull of gravity overcomes the capillary action and the sand on the face dries out. Turf needs significantly less water than exposed sand in order to stay moist so especially during a drought or in the heat of summer these bunker faces will get dry and yield some fried egg lies. The rain this week has put some moisture back into the bunker sand and it firms right back up. By keeping the faces smooth and turning them over only a few times a month the sand will hopefully kick the ball down into the bunker if it hits the face the majority of the time.

A hand full of trees did not make it through the winter and leaf all the way out this spring. On Monday we removed this ash from the left of 6 South and a hickory tree from the right of 2 North.

The dry and cool nights have kept a lid on any real warm season growth. This is giving us some extra time for detail work like applying varnish to the bridge rails.

One mowing change we made this year was moving to walk mowers instead of triplexes for the tees on the South. While this takes two extra people, less wear and some nice striping on the square tees should be a benefit when the growing season shows up.

Our new Ventrac machine swapped its mowing deck out for a sickle bar this week and knocked down the tops of all the streams. This unit should help us manage these areas more frequently this year.

Good luck to everyone in the Fourball this weekend and bring on some more rain!

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