The season is chugging along, its hard to believe its almost mid October and Columbus Day is next week! We received 0.65" of much needed rain yesterday which should help perk things up and get us over the proverbial hump. The forecast for later this weekend and the holiday is pretty ugly with inches of rain and 50 plus mile per hour winds. I suspect Monday to be a wash and Tuesday may be as well. Expect some wind damage, flooding and a mess of leaves to affect your golf schedule but hope for the best.
Fall is an extremely important time for turfgrass. Lower temperatures and reduced daylight tell the plant to start pushing roots and slow top growth. This switch tells the plant to get ready for the winter and our main turf type of poa annua is extremely sensitive to temperature swings. I think we will avoid a frost tomorrow with the warmer ocean temperatures but one never knows; if we do have one, there will be a delay. As always, pay attention to the tee sheet and prepare accordingly. I would suggest thinking about getting later tee times if you can moving forward. Walking on frosted turf can do severe damage or even kill turf. Please know its just as much as an inconvenience for the maintenance team as it is for the golfer, we have to bounce around much more and work where we can as frost comes off in order to get things done before golf. Frost may be off in one area of the course and still be on in others; I simply ask that you trust me and my team's judgement to get you out as quickly as possible.
Fertility is extremely important this time of year as well. We made our annual Polyon fertilizer application to fairways last week as well as some other fertilizer applications to roughs. I'm planning on continuing our spoon feeding regimen to greens until late October before making an application of SeaBlend to greens and tees. We will slowly begin raising cutting heights and reducing mowing frequency as we move through this month and I suspect we will cease mowing altogether sometime around Halloween. Weather will be the ultimate factor in my decision making process.
We've come into some luck thanks to a friend and member, Mike D'Annolfo who gave us a really nice supply of beautiful sandy fill. We have started to move it onto the course, specifically on the 3rd hole. The photo illustrates the general areas where the native mounding will be created. We were planning on doing it this winter but the material is here and we need the space. Mounding is in the Enhancement plan for multiple areas on the left of the hole and behind the green. I flagged the areas for my staff under the direction of our architect and we'll be hauling when we have time around our other tasks and of course the impending onslaught of leaves.
The 7th green is starting to fill in and it looks good from a distance but its still VERY thin up close; the roots are only about 1/2 inch long where we have coverage. I am continuing to feed and topdress it regularly. It is currently being mowed almost daily at a higher height of 0.150"with a specially configured mower set up with solid front rollers. The rough sod has been mowed a couple of times and we are raking the bunkers weekly to keep weeds from germinating. I've taken the ropes down but the signs are still up so please continue to stay out of the area. I only wish I could keep the deer off the green and the coyotes from digging up the bunkers, they've had a few dance parties causing some minor damage. I'm still hoping that we will be able to use it some time mid June next season if things go according to plan. There is still a decent amount of tree thinning both to the right of the green and at the corner where the old irrigation box used to be. I've ordered the new yardage markers for the sprinklers as well. I suspect he hole will be re-rated at some point prior to opening but doubt the design changes and the added length on both 7 and 8 will really affect the rating much if at all.
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| Really good from far... |
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| Good from far... |
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| Far from good and very bumpy |
