Drying back out; New Playability Standards

 

We once again had to navigate some rain this past weekend. While our property was fine to take another inch of rain Saturday morning, it was our neighbors to the North that caused us trouble. Close to 4" of rain came down upstream and flushed down through McAlpine Saturday afternoon. Water was into the fairway bunkers on 6 South and 7-12 were eventually shut down until the water receded. 

Plenty more debris was deposited into the lake as it came up almost 3 feet. This probably won't be the last time our flood plain becomes visible but the forecast for now looks great for golf.

The Green Committee has approved our new Playability and Agronomic Standards and they are available to read on the Club website on our Golf Course Care page. These Standards give an in depth view on how the courses are manicured day in and day out in order to ensure an enjoyable playing experience. 


Our warm season is charged with moisture now and the crew has been doing a good job keeping up with turf growth. Drew leads the pack in making sure detail work around bunkers and cartpaths stays dialed on the South!


The last few fans made their way out of storage this week. Micah and the team have been busy testing power and checking swaths and angles so that everything is ready when the humidity jumps back up.


We are starting the season with one fan per green and will add the second one on greens that have that capability as necessary. On Monday we have on the calendar to vent these bentgrass greens on the South. This spring the South greens have proven to drain water very efficiently and organic matter testing has come back as ideal. As we head in to summer these greens will benefit from a 1/4" solid tine vent (no mess) next week which will have very minimal impact on golf play. We will also be putting out more sand on all the tees and approaches next week to help fill in those thatch layers before the humidity ramps back up.


We have a non-environmental issue on 1 green and two small spots on the putting green currently. We have gone around and around trying to figure out what is causing the bentgrass to get stung here but there is no good answer. Our "state of the art" GPS sprayer coughed up something at an extremely high rate and the bent doesn't like it. Anything we apply to the greens is safe probably up to a 10x factor. This is a weird pattern and has not made much sense to us. We are babying these spots and for the most part it looks like these areas will recover but there may be some plugs involved from the nursery.


As for the other 99.999% of the property we are pretty happy with how things are looking at the start of summer!


Our well on 3 South that feeds the lake was replaced this week. This is a 6" pump at the end of 420 feet of 3" galvanized pipe. This is the last of our 4 wells that was in need of replacement. The 20 foot tall holly bushes were probably 2 feet tall when this well was installed 20 years ago.


The old pipe had holes that were rusted through and plenty of salt and calcium buildup on the inside which was restricting this setup from producing adequate water. The new pump and motor should yield over 100 gallons per minute to help keep lake levels higher through the summer.


The annual flowers are coming in nicely around the Clubhouse and back patio. The Horticulture team took some time to tame and trim back the vegetation around the range tees this week.


Finally this week we wish Joe DiLascio (left) well on his new Assistant Super position at Laurel Oak Country Club in Sarasota Florida. Joe has been a strong part of the operation on both courses over the past three and half years and we thank him for all he has done. Michael Ballew, who interned for us in 2021 and 22 has returned to fill Joe's shoes.


Enjoy a hopefully dry weekend!

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