July 2013 Course Conditions

We have seen it all this month in terms of weather, we have had our typical 100 degree days and more recently some days that felt like it was February again. The four inches plus of rain that we received early last week came at a great time with the fairways and roughs starting to dry out in certain spots due to the heat and some water rationing done on our part. We are over half way done with the year and have kept pretty close with all of our cultural practices that we have scheduled for the year. The rain last week did push back the White Wing fairway aerification but we will catch that back up once we return to our typical weather pattern for July and August.

In other golf course related news, the CA wood clearing crew came over and cleared out the creek in front of #18 right side tees at White Wing. This helped us out tremendously and we hope to have them back later in the year to finish out that entire section of creek down to the bridge.

This month we also announced the hiring/promotion of Reagan Olson to the Head Superintendent position at Legacy Hills. He has been acting as the interim since April of this year and has already made great improvements to the course conditions at Legacy Hills. We have also filled the position of Assistant Superintendent at Cowan Creek and that individual will be starting at the beginning of August. I will make an announcement via the Golf Communicator and Golf Maint. Blog when he has officially started.

Verti-cutting Greens

If you’ve had a chance to play Cowan Creek this week you may have noticed some areas on the greens that have some small patches of scalped turf. This week we decided to get a bit more aggressive with our verti-cutting so that we could remove more thatch than normal. These areas are where the verti-cutter “pulled” or cut into the grain one way and then the mower cut that grain the opposite direction on the mowing pass. This is a normal occurrence when going this aggressively and the scalped spots will not affect ball roll and will heal very quickly. This process will take place on each of the courses over the next few weeks.

Thatch removal is critical to keeping the turf healthy and to promote growth. It also helps speed the greens up and smooth them out. During a regular play day we would not be able to do this due to the amount of clean-up but on a closed day we have the time to get everything cleaned up once the process is complete.  As you can see from the photo below the amount of thatch removed from just one green was quite a bit. (The hat placed on top is just for size reference, we did not burry any of our employees during the making of this communicator) We will continue to be aggressive with our verti-cutting for the remainder of the growing season and the results in turf quality will be evident both in playability and aesthetically.