June 27... Summertime!

Well this week officially made it summer on the calendar and with the weather. Last Friday gave us 84° with 36 mph winds that dried the place down to dust. The following days through Wednesday this week were highs of 83°, 91°, 85°, 99° and finally 88° on Wednesday. Tuesday was the most uncomfortable I've ever been on a golf course in 35 years; I think even Satan himself was hot. Kudos to all of the ladies and guests that roughed that weather to play in the member guest.

So much for a wet stretch. This really goes to show that a bunch of rainy days only provide so much to the course and all of that excess water doesn't do much for us when the ponds are full. We haven't had rain since Saturday June 14, and 13 days is a long time to go without it. We've been watering like mad especially with the heat and high evapotranspiration rates but its nearly impossible to keep up with that. I'm hoping for something this weekend to give us some help. You can see the wells are running and we are already pumping down the pond on 1. We lost about 3 inches of moisture to the wind, heat and plants in the last 13 days. In order to replace that we would need to use 4,000,000 gallons of water which is obviously MUCH more that what we even have in our ponds. It would be impossible to keep up with those temperatures regardless of the fact that we had a tournament going on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday this past week. As you can imagine, the turf needs a little drink in the form of at least a syringe and a big drink in spots that heat up to the unsafe temperatures. We will have to stay on them with hoses, rehydrate plants and give them a few days to recover from the stresses of heat, mowing, rolling and of course foot traffic from golfers.

We are, as always, being very stingy with our water as we need to make it through the rest of the season. Each heavy rainstorm is a blessing, especially for us with our limited resources. In the end, we are trying to give you a firm and fast playing golf course so some brown spots where rocks are less than an inch below the surface are going to burn out. If you want lush and green, Bass Rocks isn't the place for you unless its spring or fall. You'll see the maintenance team out with hoses conserving water and handwatering surrounds, fairway spots and obviously green areas trying to add to areas that need extra.

This week is also the optimal time for white grub control applications so if you are doing that at home the time is now through the July15th for preventative applications. The most common product on the market for homeowners and professionals is Merit (imidacloprid) which is also marketed under different branding. Look at the active ingredient on the label if you are buying it as GrubEx or something else; follow the label and put down the correct rate. Also pay attention to the watering requirements after your application and be cognizant of any restrictions like applying near water bodies. The label is the law.

This coming week is the 4th of July; that used to mean the course would be extra busy. These days EVERY day is like the old 4th of July or Memorial Day. The course is full of golfers on a regular basis. This means extra wear, more divots, ballmarks and bunker shots. We fill divots every single day first thing in the morning by a well trained, highly skilled and thorough professional (my son Charlie).  Ballmarks that are immediately repaired on the green will heal within 24 hours; an unrepaired ballmark will take 2 weeks to heal especially in the heat of the summer. Please fix your ballmarks, your playing partners ballmarks and remind your fellow members that this is basic golf etiquette. Raking your bunker after play is the same. We all know the old adage of "fix your ballmark and one other". Its all for the benefit of the course and those playing behind you. This is not just here at Bass Rocks, but it is getting worse everywhere and becoming a problem at almost every course. A superintendent's lament is when every golfer tells you they repair ballmarks yet there are 20 per green every single morning. Thanks for your help in this department. 

I wish you all a great weekend and upcoming week for the 4th of July holiday. God Bless America

Mid May

It has been raining and raining and I'm guessing the new drought monitor that comes out this week has us out of drought, at least here in Eastern Massachusetts but time will tell. The spring is usually a great time to grow grass, set yourself up for success for the season and try and recover from any issues you experienced last year or in the winter. Sometimes, especially here on Cape Ann, it can be a challenge. Gloucester sticks out into that cold ocean which keeps us much cooler than everywhere else; even a half a mile makes a big difference. This year has been nice though; its been in the 60s and even 70s a few times which is very atypical and much appreciated.

Regular rains have allowed us to get some banged up areas filled in. Areas like the rough get minimal fertilizer but spring is one of the times we feed them a good bit of nitrogen. We utilize a polymer coated, slow release product that gives us a little quick shot of nitrogen and a long slow feed that is released based on water and temperature. This allow us to give the turf a steady diet of what it needs through the summer months. The nitrogen provides the plant with the nutrients it needs to grow roots and shoots in preparation for the stresses of summer when roots shrink significantly and shoot growth is less. 

The negative side of all that growth, at least if you aren't a professional golfer, is that the rough is THICK and lush. The best tip I can give to any golfer playing in the spring is "hit it straight and keep it in the short grass". Its like this everywhere right now. The staff has gone around this week knocking back the fescue mounding to more reasonable lengths and has made a few cutline adjustments most notable is the mounding on the 17th hole. 

This past Monday we were closed for the entire day which allowed us to get some very small coring tines into the greens, remove a tiny bit of thatch, get some air in to help dry them out after last week's deluge and put a light dusting of sand. We also got a ton of grass cut, a couple sprays out and other odds and ends. We followed up with a light verticut on approaches to remove some thatch and will follow that up with some sand as well. The purpose of this cultural practice is to firm up the surfaces in front of the greens to allow balls to better feed onto the putting surfaces. We played around with the settings on the 14th hole which ended up being slightly more aggressive than I wanted. I also noticed that slicing side to side may grab your club a little so we adjusted to a different direction that is with the line of play to improve playability. 

We are working on creating a temporary green to be utilized for the 7th hole while the new is being constructed and is out of play. It will be circled in white and should be considered Ground Under Repair.  Please take a drop from this area. It will be continuously aerated and topdressed throughout the season to help it firm up before the height is slowly lowered. It won't be exactly like a green by any stretch of the imagination but we want to give you something better than just putting on fairway turf. 

The annual flowers will be going in the ground next week and I'm hoping the tennis patio will wrap up soon as well. We pulled out the old, unruly variety of hydrangeas that were planted in front of the ladies locker room and Cheryl installed a few different varieties along with some grasses that should neaten that area up. 

Our seasonal staff which is mostly comprised of college students and a couple of high schoolers are trickling in this week and next with the high schoolers helping out just on weekends right now. We are happy to have Jackson Colbert, Brooks Slingluff and Aiden Doke back from their first year of college. They look no worse for the wear and are ready to get back at it. We also have a couple new staff members in Chris Esposito and your own Drew Johnson. Please have patience as the greenheads learn the rules and protocols.

Open!

It has been a weird couple of weeks since the last post and the first update of 2025. I thought it might be helpful to touch on a few other items and keep people in the loop on what to expect the next few weeks. 

It is 28° here this morning as I put this together before we open the course today at 10am even after yesterday afternoons snow squall. Consider today and the next couple weeks a soft opening before we have our actual Opening Day later this month. We will be spending time going through the bunkers, adding sand, prepping plant gardens, fixing paths and cleaning up other slightly damaged areas from the winter traffic and a few projects that have been undertaken over the last few months. 

The turf is growing ever so slowly, especially the greens now that the covers have been off for a couple weeks and they are reacclimating to the cold. The greens will be maintained quite a bit longer while we stay cold here through April and into early May in order to help build roots and carbohydrate stores for the summer. This is even more important this spring as we experienced a significant drought last fall and are still in the midst of it. It has rained 8 out of the last 9 days here in April but we are still in a drought. According to the current Massachusetts Drought Monitor we are still in a Critical Drought. The ponds might be full and the ground saturated but the levels in reservoirs are still quite low with the area being 8-10 inches below normal for the last 6 months or so. This will require those of us with water withdrawal permits to follow our Seasonal Demand Management Plans as well as institute our Water Conservation Plans. We will be required to cut back usage to mandated levels until the status changes. We are hoping for a few isolated heavy rainfall events that will fill drinking water storage areas statewide sooner rather than later and then, of course, a once or twice a week rain event throughout the season.

The next few weeks will be busy for us as we begin to put our seasonal applications for broadleaf and grassy weeds, seedhead suppression materials, slow release fertilizers on longer turf among other things. These products will  be applied based on weather forecasts, soil temperatures, scouting, plant signifiers among other things. As always, spring is "organized chaos" for even the best golf course maintenance teams. Its always nice to see golfers back on the course even though we enjoyed having the course mostly to ourselves (and the geese) for the last couple of months. Safety nets on 4 and 17 will go up tomorrow, tennis court windscreens will go up over the next few weeks as well as many other accessories. Please, as always remember that this is your course, replace your divots, fix your ballmarks and rake your bunkers. Do it for yourself and your fellow members, especially the groups playing behind you! 

Almost April 2025

It is that time of year where the ground thaws, grass starts to green up and buds start to pop on the trees. Temperature variations last weekend were insane across New England with some places hitting 80° while we were sitting at 33° with snow flurries and Portland, Maine had 5 inches of snow! The good weather is coming, I'm just not sure when. At least we kind of had a winter this year with a few snow events and rain that turned into ice. 

The maintenance team was busy with snow cleanup as well as equipment maintenance. We are wrapping up our service work on all of the equipment as we speak. Everything has been serviced and inspected with a fine toothed comb, detailed and painted. Cutting reels have been rebuilt, blades sharpened, supplies have been refurbished and the shop straightened out. Continuing education classes were a focus for the professional staff allowing for licenses to remain up to date and exposure to some amazing new technologies in the turf field. Our staff lineup will be a little different this season but we have hired some new seasonal help and are excited for them to start in early May, get them trained and productive. 

There's definitely a lot going on. A new tennis patio is underway by the upper tennis courts. An amphitheater style patio with a sitting wall is taking shape. Natural rock veneer will be utilized with a bluestone cap, accent lighting and some plantings will finish the area off. This will be a nice addition to the area for the summer.

The greens were aerated on March 11th, 12th and 13th. We uncovered the greens, applied a heavy sand topdressing, aerated with 3/4" tines, brushed the holes full, rolled them and covered them back up. I am thankful for an experienced and dedicated staff; we were a well oiled machine. Covers were permanently removed early last week; the greens made it through in pretty good shape, were rolled six times before mowing and making our first poa annua seedhead suppression application last Friday. Tee covers will come off this week followed by a mow and a seedhead and fungicide spray as well. We are looking ahead and aiming to open the greens sometime around the weekend of the Masters if the weather cooperates. 

The course has been cleaned up of sticks and debris, the irrigation system has been charged and tested, on course bathrooms are turned on but will remain closed until they are cleaned and some other items addressed. We have changed out some sand and removed an old liner on the 4th hole and will continue to work on course preparations in the coming weeks and months. We will be bouncing back and forth between items on the course and around the clubhouse as the weather changes; the soft wet conditions make it sometimes difficult to get around the course without making a mess and more work. We reworked the parking area by our greens nursery/practice area in an effort to keep people off the grass on the first hole. We also added some cobble edging by the 2nd green and hope to add some more as time allows.

We are also working on the initial stages of a future project to increase our pond storage capacities on holes 1 and 18. A feasibility study is underway looking at the current conditions, environmental conditions, existing soil makeup, sedimentation quantities and dredging or expansion possibilities. The newly approved Enhancement Plan that was developed by our architect Robert McNeil is the blueprint for any modifications. Once the results of the study are in hand we will be able to look forward at the options. Increasing our water storing capabilities is critical to future course management. 

The 7th green is slated to begin in August after the Michael Burke Invitational; we have been moving fill material out there all winter in an effort to minimize disruption to membership. The site is difficult to access and material needed to be delivered in small load of 3-4 yards at a time. Lets just say there were hundreds of loads brought over the last few months. We will level out the area and seed it for stability until the time comes to start the project. It is an extremely challenging site with a lot of unknowns under the existing green. We know there is rock, just not exactly where or how much. The architect's goal is to utilize what is there underneath to create as natural a feel as possible. The green will be built in a similar fashion to the 2nd green with a modified USGA sand base over a gravel layer and seeded and plugged with cores from our existing greens. This will give us a surface that will be similar to our other greens and should probably be ready around Memorial Day of 2026.

October 2024: Summer Synopsis and Master Plan Update

We are enjoying another beautiful New England fall with great weather and good golfing conditions the last few months. This summer was quite a challenge with the extreme weather but fall is here and the last bit of good golfing weather is ahead of us. We weathered the storm of extremes and high volume golf and are continuing to look at the future with the newly received Golf Course Enhancement Plan that will be discussed on October 16th at 5pm in the clubhouse. Please attend what I expect to be an informative meeting with our golf course architect Robert McNeil; this will be the blueprint for course modifications as the club moves forward. I'll give you an update on a few on course items, summarize the summer and provide some background on the planning process as we've worked through it the past 12 months or so.

What a summer, a scorching hot and humid July with just about no rain in July, August and most of September. When we did get some rain it measured just about 0.1" on the rain gauge which lasts the plants about half a day!  Thank goodness for the new irrigation system which allowed us to put water in more places than the old system, with more precision, control and stretched our resources as far as we could. The wells ran all summer long and by the end were producing half their usual volume. Water quality was less than desirable with two of our wells becoming completely unusable with salt contents at three times the recommended level of sodium; using this water would quite literally kill the turf. I'm monitoring the sodium levels on a daily basis and check soil tests a few times a year. Thankfully the longest stretch of no rain for 33 days came after aeration in mid August and the weather was much cooler at night with a few dewy mornings. At the end, we actually had to buy water from the city for 6 days to get us through. The rest of the fall should be manageable so long as we don't get any crazy fluctuations and an occasional rain event.

This extended period of dry weather and well water usage does create an issue in our soils. The salt air already creates a challenge with fog off the ocean depositing salt crystals on leaf blades as it burns off. Again, salts are the main ingredients in weed and grass killers so natural rain or good clean irrigation water is important. When you don't have both or either of these you need to get out your chemistry set, wave a magic wand and try to manipulate the environment. I am not surprised that our recent tests are showing some really high levels of sodium. This can be somewhat remediated or modified by adding some other nutrients with stronger electron bonds like calcium, magnesium and potassium in the right amounts, at the right time and in the proper order. Today we started by adding some calcium sulfate (gypsum) to the greens in a granular form. We did about half the greens today and will do the others sometime next week. Once this product is applied we quite literally flood the green with water to get it into solution and into the top few inches of the soil profile; we will repeat this again this evening. This will create a situation where the calcium will come into contact with the sodium that is stuck on the soil colloids and quite literally kick the sodium off. Calcium is sodium's stronger big brother so it replaces the sodium on the soil and then flushes out of the profile. This requires a lot of water to ensure it makes it out the bottom of the root zone. We will follow up in a few weeks with a different calcium source and then some potassium later in the fall.

As I mentioned already the architect will be here on October 16th to show membership the new Enhancement Plan for the golf course; I strongly recommend that everyone attend if you can. The plan has been created to provide a blueprint for future changes and improvements to the course and to ensure that there is a consistent design style for the property. Bass Rocks had a plan previously put together in 2001 and has been the greens committee's guide for the past 20 plus years. Club membership, changes in demographics as well as people's priorities change over time and after 23 years it was time to update this document and help plan future course improvements. The plan makes it easy to maintain continuity for years as committees and boards change. The main areas of interest had to do with neighbor concerns, water retention and flooding issues, green, tee and bunker updates and enhancing the practice facility. Robert was initially tasked with addressing these areas with the following goals in no specific order:

1. Maintain the feel of Bass Rocks with rock features and seaside vistas.

2. Balance functional improvements like cart paths and drainage with enhancement opportunities like bunkers, greens and mounding.

3. Create visual and strategic interest on the wide open holes like 11, 12 and the meadows.

4.  Develop a plan that make the course more challenging for the lower handicap golfer without penalizing the higher handicapper.

5. Create a plan that accomplishes the other goals efficiently and cost effectively without adding unnecessary labor intensive maintenance challenges.

6. Have some flexibility regarding construction due to challenges such as rock and ledge outcroppings.

I sincerely hope many of you can make the meeting, see what Robert has to say and ask lots of questions. As a teaser I can tell you that the 7th hole is well represented in the plan! I am also happy to answer any questions you may have about the plan if you don't have the ability to make the meeting or simply want to know more.