Successes and Failures

Public Service Announcement

We are aerifying greens on Sept. 22nd and 23rd

I don't know that I have ever been happier to reach the month of September.  This has been a miserable last 6 weeks trying to keep tees and fairways in good playing condition.  The good news is that these areas are healing nicely, but they will still need a bunch of work done in order to keep these problems from coming back each year.  I will address my plans there further in this posting.  In a couple of my explanations, I will mention traffic.  Staley is on pace to have 30,000 rounds played this year.  Average for a private club would be around 24,000.  I would have to acquire some past info in order to know Staley's average, but 30 is a bunch.  Especially when most of those rounds are played with 1 person per cart.  The good thing is that the greens have held up well all year long and should start playing even better as they firm up when the humidity leaves us.  

Tee Boxes

So its apparent to all that the tees on the course have been beat down this year.  They took a hard hit during the last 2 weeks of July when we received 8 inches of rain in those 2 weeks.  The tees don't drain well at all and when they get saturated every divot is larger than normal and will not recover when the temps are in the 90's.  What is worse than the divot is the foot twist that comes with every swing.  A person's feet will literally rip the top half of the grass plant from its roots when the ground is soft and wet.  Again, when temps stay in the 90's during this, there is no recovery happening so then that spot will die.  Some tees are worse than others, and some tees seem to not be affected at all.  My first theory would be soil composition and that some tees are built with more clay than others.  Like 3,6,and 7 tees seem to take traffic a lot better than 1,2,4, and 5.  The 1 thing that I know I can do to create a more consistent rootzone is aerification.  Our tees need to be on a more strict aerification schedule meaning pulling cores once in the spring and once in the fall plus a heavy topdressing with each.  This will help with drainage and the overall soil composition.  I also started ramping up the fertility on the tees when I started seeing the damage.  The fertilizer I was spraying is high in potassium which aids in the plant's stress management and I will from now on be starting earlier in the year with it.  There is another product that I tested this year on tees that I will also be implementing earlier before the stressful part of the year.  It contains Silicon which creates a rigidity in the plant to help against traffic and stress.  I literally saw a difference in the leaf blades within 24 hours.  Below is a soil profile of #5 tee.  There is actually a decent layer of sand below the thatch layer.  However, that amount of thatch can definitely cause water to stay at the top surface and not penetrate.  Pulling a plug during aerification is a must for this situation.  I am sure I will find similar profiles as I check more trouble tees.   

So I just got back from profiling a couple more tees and it hurts my heart to see what I found.  Its the same mess with large thatch layers and a lot of clay.  These 3 photos were all taken from the same tee on #1.  It just shows the inconsistency across the board.  Core aerification will help this tremendously, its just going to take some time.  If I punch holes this fall and next spring, we should see a good improvement, but it will take a couple years strung together of good cultural practices in order to have excellent, playable tees across the entire course.  We can get there.

 

Fairways

So I addressed the fairway troughs in my last posting, but I wanted to talk briefly about them again.  I painted out the drain lines that I would like to install and it is a literal mile of pipe.  I will probably not be able to get all that done this off-season, but we are going to give our best shot.  Just about every hole needs some help, but I will prioritize the best I can in order to address landing zone areas first.  #1 has quite a bit in the prime landing zone from the tee so we will probably wait for that one until mid winter when play has died down.  Other than that hole, numbers 5, 13, 14, & 16 will probably be my top priorities.  I will more than likely keep 13 for last just because there is so much to do there. 

Noticed Improvements

We have seen improved turf quality from last year to this in some areas that we worked on in the off season.  The drainage in #8 tees has worked extremely well and has kept those tees playable throughout the year.  We will get the drain lines seeded this fall where they settled.  11 green has healed in nicely and seems to be firmer with the removal of the trees and clearing of the drain lines.  13 green has also healed in well since it receives more sunlight.  The bowl area on 17 green has survived this year.  Grant was able to sod cut a few strips of rough and shave down the soil below to drop the grade a little.  This allows any surface water to runoff instead of getting stuck on the bentgrass.  Below are pictures comparing the soil profile in that green area from last year to this year.  Black layer had formed last year due to excessive water sitting in the profile.  This creates an anaerobic environment for the rootzone which in turn kills the plant.  Now that we have removed the water, the rootzone is healthy. 

More areas of improvement are approaches.  Last year we had a lot of turf loss due to heavy clay soils being too saturated and creating more anaerobic rootzones.  This year we were able to aerify approaches twice creating more air space in the soil and an overall healthier rootzone.  We will core aerify approaches one more time this fall.   

I hope you have enjoyed another turf talk and as always, feel free to stop me on the course with any questions.