TOUCH UP

We added a little touch up paint to the bag stand in front of the clubhouse and tightened up a few loose boards. We try to spend a little time sprucing up the front door to our golf course to make anyone's visit to our club a pleasurable experience.

CLUB HOUSE GROUND IMPROVEMENT

We installed a rock buffer against the path in front of the clubhouse. This is a challenging area where cart traffic is very congested and carts are forced to drive on the turf. The area looked terrible so we dug it out 3" deep and installed river rock with to clean the area up and provide a surface that should withstand the cart traffic.

13 TEE IMPROVEMENT

We are trying to eliminate erosion on 13 tee complex. We installed a fence to stop traffic entering the tees from the steep slope above the tee. During heavy rains the soil would wash down the traffic paths and deposit soil on the tee surface. We have relocated the ball washer to the new walk up approach to the tee. This should be a permanent solution to the ugly mess we had there before. The approach has been sodden and the area looks sharp. Our staff did an excellent job with this much needed improvement. Thank you for understanding the importance of proper traffic control to promote healthy turf grass.

AERATING TEES

We aerated tees this week. Aeration serves a few purposes.

One- Aeration relieves compaction. The process of removing soil with aerating tines leaves a void in the groud. This void allows the soil surrounding it to relax and spread out. This is important for healthy roots to grow in the loose soil.

Two- Thatch management. Removing a plug, pulverize it, and depositing it on top of the turf results in less thatch accumulation. This allows for fertilizer, water, and air to filter into the ground easier helping the plant grow.

We are evaluating a plan to top dress tees with sand in 2016. This is a costly commitment, but it will improve the tee surface. Core aeration and sand topdressing will create a firm tee surface due to the incorporation of sand resulting in a sand cap on the tees as the sand builds up over time.

LANDSCAPE BED REMOVAL 1 GREEN

We removed the dead and unsightly plant material right of one green. We graded and seeded the area. We will maintain it as rough once it is established. It will improve the playability and look of the hole.

IRRIGATION REPAIR

We repaired the leak on 14 tees. It was a 2" lateral leak that required a new 90 degree elbow and a thrust block. The are will dry out now. Thanks for your patience as we diagnose irrigation leaks. We try to find them and repair them as quickly as possible.

5" RAIN EVENT

We needed rain. Not 5" of rain all at once, but we will take what we can get. This rain will not do much for the turf as most of it ran off. The good news is we captured a lot of the runoff in our lakes. This will give us irrigation water that should carry us well into the fall.

WET OR DRY AND WHY?

We get a lot of feedback from members about playing conditions. One of the complaints we get is how wet the course is, especially in the mirnings.

We monitor course conditions all hours of the day. We apply water based on plant needs and playing conditions. Our goal each day is to not see drought wilt on our fairways. Drought wilt on Bentgrass is very risky. Once the plant goes into wilt stage it is extremely weak. Cart and play traffic will kill the wilting turf.

We attempt to calculate evapotranspiration rates for each day. Evapotranspiration is a calculation that factors wind, humidity, plant type, and other environmental factors that effect how much moisture is lost each day. We replenish the lost moisture each night with the irrigation system.

One of the challenges we face is often soft conditions in the morning due to the irrigation cycle replenishing the total daily moisture loss in one shot over night.

We are working on a few methods to help minimize the soft morning conditions. One of the solutions is to replenish half of the moisture loss during the night and the other half mid day. This evens out the irrigation so it is replenishing moisture evenly as it is being evaporated throughout the day. The main problem with this method is the potential of getting members wet with the sprinklers running in the afternoon.

We often times walk a very fine line between healthy turf and dirt. Unfortunately firm playing conditions fall right in the middle.

We appreciate your cooperation as we try to fine tune our watering practices to provide a balance between healthy and playable Bentgrass.

HELPING HAND

I am an active board member with the Heart of America Golf Course Superintendents Association. We donate our time to promote and assist fellow industry professionals better themselves and the golf courses they care for.

It is a fulfilling service that a I am fortunate our HAGCSA members entrust me with this responsibility.

One fun thing we do is help other Superintendents in need. Many Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents, and other industry professionals donated our time at Lions Gate preparing for the Digital Ally Open. I mowed fairways with some of my friends and colleagues.

EDGING CART PATHS

We attempt to maintain a very high maintenance standard at Staley. We will now be edging cart paths twice per year as part of our initiative to make our Members and Guests that visit Staley Farms Golf Club proud of our golf course.

RAIN DAY PRJECTS

We have been able to take advantage of some rain days. We have edged sprinklers, edged yardage markers, edged bunkers and spruced up a few landscape areas.

We like to find positive projects that can improve the property when we are facing adversity such as daily rain outs.

WET

As of today we have received 12.14" of rain at Staley Farms Golf Club. The average for May is 5.12. Needless to say this has made our lives very challenging in the Maintenance Department.

Our staff has maintained a positive attitude in spite of many days working in the rain and some late nights mowing when the course was dry enough to mow.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation as we attempt to maintain the course to the standards we all expect.

We do our best to be as accommodating as possible with the cart path rule. We attempt to protect the course from traffic when it is too wet. We always have our Members and Guests best interests in mind as we evaluate the cart rule.

It looks like some dry weather is on the way with the cold front that is supposed to arrive this weekend. Let's all hope for some good golf weather in June.

GRUB CONTROL

We applied grub control to the course this week.  We are right on time with the application and it should protect our turf for the 2015 season.  We were rained out this weekend as we planned to treat the last few fairways so we will have to wait a few days to finish the application.

We also applied a fungicide and growth regulator with this application.  We are now in the part of the season that we encounter fungus diseases that damage our turf.  We will make fungicide applications periodically all season now until late September to remedy the disease pressure.  The growth regulator will help us keep up with mowing.  We have a lot of acres to mow and with the rains we have been getting, we get behind quickly.    

TEE LINE

We are always looking for ways to elevate the experience we offer our Members and Guests at Staley Farms Golf Club.

The new tee line will provide a nice alternative to the natural tee line on days that the turf tee is out of service.

You can tee the ball up and hit irons off the artificial surface.

We hope you enjoy the new tee.

NEW EQUIPMENT

We purchased two new greens mowers this season. We accomplished two things with this purchase. We upgraded our greens mowers to the latest technology in greens mowing. Second we will convert our greens mowers into tee mowers.

The end result will be more consistency and better playing surfaces.

I want to thank our Management and Ownership team for committing to our plan to make Staley Farms Golf Club the best golf club in Kansas City. The equipment upgrades are critical to our success.

ENCROACHMENT

The trees on the left of three tee box were taking over the hole. They interfered with the design of the hole. We kept the important trees that framed the hole and cleared the remaining trash from the entire tee area. What a great view now. We are very happy with the result.

QUESTIONS ABOUT WATER

I understand some of you have asked questions about water running on the course last week.  I will explain our decision to water and why we had a sprinkler running on 12 for many hours.

WHY DID WE CHOOSE TO WATER?
We chose to charge our irrigation system last week due to the extreme dry conditions we were seeing on our greens.  Our greens are constructed of sand.  The sand has very little water holding capacity so it dries out very quickly.  We felt we were potentially going to see turf damage if we didn't water.  We saw moisture readings in the single digits with our moisture meters and we know that is a dangerous zone for Bentgrass.

WHY DID A SPRINKLER HEAD STICK ON FOR HOURS?
We have over 1000 sprinkler heads on the course.  During normal conditions we are able to predict how our sprinkler heads operate.  With the extreme cold temperatures that the irrigation system has been exposed to this winter, some of the small valves in the sprinkler heads are frozen.  This doesn't allow us to have control over that head.  We noticed that a sprinkler head on 1 and a sprinkler head on 12 stuck on when we charged the system.  We were able to valve 1 off immediateley, but 12 is in a spot that we were not able to isolate, also the head on 12 is in the native so it had no negative effect on the playability of the course during the watering window that we needed to water all of the greens and tees.

Thank you for your continued support of our goals to make Staley Farms the best golf course in Kansas City.    

MOWING GREENS

The weather is beautiful.  We chose to mow our greens today.  They are completely thawed out and we want to give you a great putting surface during this strange stretch of weather we are going to have this week.  We will roll them next Tuesday also to keep them rolling nice during the great golf weather.  We also cut all of the cups today so we will be able to rotate to new pins all this week.

ENJOY:)

DRY CONDITIONS

We have been monitoring our greens with moisture meters and the greens have dropped below our moisture threshold.

We watered this morning. We will water for three days and then shut the system back down.

It is time consuming to charge the irrigation system but we didn't have a choice. The moisture meters tell us when to water and we rely on the data to plan our watering schedule.