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!
