Course work

This morning we started the week off right by changing pin locations and mowing greens and collars.  This time of year, mowing is less about managing growth and geared more toward cleaning and smoothing the putting surface.  As long as the weather is warm, we will continue weekly mowing to keep our greens in shape for play.  In the coming weeks we will apply a heavy layer of  topdressing sand as cold weather sets in.  The sand serves as a blanket for the winter, protecting the crown or growing point of the bent grass (and poa) plant from winter desiccation.  Desiccation is a concern without snow cover, and to this point we haven't had much in the way of snow and have been irrigating fairly regularly.

Just as snow protects the plant from desiccation, too much snow cover can lead to snow mold, and for that we are planning our second preventative fungicide application this week.  For this application we will be applying Instrata and Rhapsody, which should carry us through February.  About a month ago we applied Spectro90 which we use for a short term preventative in case of big, early snowstorm.  That product has all but worn off, so as soon as the wind dies down we will put out the Instrata/Rhapsody combo that has worked nicely for us that last couple of years in preventing snow mold.  As winter sets in fully, we will discuss different forms of snow mold and hopefully continue answering the age-old question, "so what do you guys do in the winter".

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone has a safe a relaxing Thanksgiving this Thursday.  The golf course will be closed for the holiday, but will reopen on Friday for play.  We are closed for only a few days a year and with the warm weather we are experiencing the course can use a break from all of the cart traffic.  Enjoy the holiday and we will look forward to moving our projects along next week. 

#8 is moving along

Blue tee will be expanded out to the right

Our next victim, ahhhemm tee project will be #8 blue/black tee.  This will be a little different than what we did on #6, in that we are connecting two tee boxes to create one large tee as opposed to creating a completely new tee.  The primary goal with this tee is to increase teeing ground with a minimal amount of disturbance.  The two existing tees are offset a little bit so we will be adding on to the north side of the blue tee to create a teardrop shape.  Our main focus for the coming days is hauling in soil to bring the grade between the two tees up.  There is only 4" height difference from the black tee top to the blue tee top, so the 40 linear feet between the old tees will have at most a 1% grade front to back.  



This area will become new teeing ground





   

Almost there

Shy of a little fine tuning our work on #6 is just about done for now.  We are planning to wait until after the first of the year to grass the new tee on #6, but in the meantime some moisture will do alot of good in settling and crumbing out the tee as it stands today.  The fine tuning will take place prior to seed and sod going down, but we are happy with the way it came out.

 

#6 Update

After 4 days of hauling 21 loads of material from various areas of the golf course, we have enough material to construct a tee, we think... 

With measurements we took prior to material being moved, we will restake the tee box and begin grading the tee top with the grade box.  Our goal is 1% of fall from back to front of the tee box, and a 4:1 slope off of the sides (or tee ring), tieing in nicely with the surrounding rough.

'Tis the season

In the last two weeks we have had two good snowstorms that dropped around 12" total, accompanied with some pretty cold nights.  Prior to the 1st storm we drained down our bridge crossings where the irrigation mainlines hang underneath, exposed to the elements.  We have four bridge crossings that we isolate and drain during very cold weather to prevent ice from building up in the lines.  Three of the crossings happen to be on holes 5 and 6, so we isolate those holes from the rest of the irrigation system, the other crosses the wetlands on hole #13, which is also isolated/drain from the rest of the system. 

On Monday we began draining down and blowing out the outlying areas including the clubhouse and entrance areas.  The process of blowing out is pretty straight forward if you understand the layout of your system.  We connect a 185 compressor set at 70psi as close to the water source as possible blowing water out of the mainline first. 

Once the mainline is clear we run each electric valve until it blows only air, working away from the compressor until the majority of the water is clear.  We usually run through each zone a second time to be sure all of the water has passed through.  Blowout of the outlying areas typically takes about one day.  This year we had a little extra time, so we blew out the entire driving range, and area that typically receives the least irrigation this time of the year.      

 

We irrigate the entrance to Legacy Ridge parkway at 104th and 112th including some medians in between.  When the course was built in 1993, there were no homes around the course but the entrance areas had to be landscaped to facilitate the development of the neighborhood.  The majority of landscaped areas along "the parkway" are maintained by HOA contractors and irrigated with direct connections to the reclaimed system.  For whatever reason, the entrance areas remain connected to our system.      

We typically wait until a little later in the year to blowout the on-course irrigation, depending on the weather.  It's a double edge sword, if we blowout too early the weather can dry out and the need to pressure back up arises.  It's also possible to wait too long to blowout, the sprinklers can freeze and crack and blowout will no longer effectively remove water from the lines. 

#6 Tee Addition

We are underway with one of many new tees we plan to build this winter, in this case on hole #6.  The tee is located between the white and red tee box.  Our plan is to use this new tee box as the "normal" white tee and move the blue and black tee forward or back as we deem necessary.  We are planning on a tee measuring about 1000 sq ft in size that matches the shape and height of the existing tee boxes.   

  

The stakes seen in the picture above represent the approximate size of the tee surface, as you can see there is a great deal of slope currently, so we will need about 76 cubic yards of fill material to bring the tee up to the proper grade.  We use the stakes to determine how big of an area we need to disturb to properly tie the tee in with the surrounding area.  

We sod cut a generous ring around the area we need to disturb, using as much of the sod as we currently can, and rototill the remaining turf.  At the moment we don't have a need for all of this sod anywhere on the course, but with multiple tees planned after the new year, we will reuse as much of that sod that we can.  

Once we have turned over all the existing turf, we haul in fill material to incorporate ino the base for our new tee complex.  As I mentioned before, we need about 76 yards of material, so for the next few days we will be hauling 4 yards at a time out to this location in our Adams trailer.  Repeat this about 18 more times and we are ready to start shaping our new tee. 

The new tee will play about 20 yards shorter than the current white yardage, requiring a 190-210 yd tee shot to hit the landing area.  #6 is one of our more difficult and also most interesting holes with a forced carry on the second shot over an irrigation canal to snug landing area.  For most players it is definitely a 3 shot par 5, and without a well placed tee shot, a difficult second shot can make or break the hole for most.