Range Tee Renovation

 

I am pleased to announce that we are moving forward with a driving range tee renovation.  Our goal is to ensure a good stand of turf allowing members to use the grass tee more than in the past.  I would like to see the mats used only on Mondays, for outside events, and after rain events.  I believe that with our renovation plan, we will be able to accomplish this.

On Monday the 28^th, a contractor will be on site to till and laser level the entire range tee so that there will be a 1 percent slope from north to south and from east to west.  This will ensure a good surface drainage of moisture and a quicker drying of the teeing surface.  Once this is complete, we will then seed a well proven variety of bluegrass for the hitting area.  Turf Blue HGT is the name of this variety and it has performed very well throughout the transition zone in range tee and fairway type situations.  Some colleagues have also touted its ability to withstand abuse during the heat of the summer.  Choosing a bluegrass over zoysia should allow us to use the grass tee deeper into the year since it doesn’t transition into dormancy as early.  This variety also grows with rhizomes, meaning it grows laterally similar to bentgrass and bermudagrass.   Below are a couple pictures of this turf in Kirksville, MO on August 20^th. 

 

 

I am confident that this turf will stand up to the abuse of a full golf season and will be able to fill in divots through the heat of the summer where the bentgrass failed to do so.  Once the seed has been planted it will be 14-20 days before we see germination.  I plan on applying some pre-plant fertilizer to help jump start the new seedlings and from there on we will push it has hard as we can until the cold weather shuts the grass down for the year.  Once the weather starts to break in March, we will start pushing the new turf hard again.  We will do everything possible in order to get members on the grass as early as possible in 2021.  Again, I am very excited about this project and believe that there will be more time spent hitting off the grass in the future.  As always, stop me with questions or have the proshop relay any to me.

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.

No More Please!

I Give Up, Please Stop Raining!

Hopefully the forecast is correct and we will be getting some much drier and cooler weather in the coming weeks.  Staley has received 10 inches of rain in the month of July and 8.5 of that has come after the 15th. There is nowhere for the water to go at this point.  The taller bentgrass on tees and fairways has fought against high heat and humidity for 2 months now and it is extremely tired.  All the added moisture makes it highly susceptible to mechanical damage from golf cart and mower tires, or the twisting action of feet on tees.  Add to that the highest disease pressure I have seen in 10 years and you have a great recipe for the butt kicking of Brien.   Thank goodness we only have a month to go until grass wants to grow again.

My main goal of this post is to address the disease that we are seeing on tees and fairways at right now.  The main culprit is Brown Patch and it is everywhere.  We started seeing it on the 23rd of July on tees and fairways.  If not controlled preventatively, this disease will start showing up around the start of July or late June if humidity levels are high.  We made our first preventative app on the 30th of June and it should have given us 28 days of coverage.  Our second app was scheduled for the 20th of July because it usually takes the chemical 3 days or so to work its way into the part of the plant it needs to be in.  Well........it rained 1.25" that day.  And then it rained .75" the next day.  So at this point its Wednesday and we need to spray greens, tees, and fairways so greens got priority. Plus we needed to mow tees and fairways before we could spray them.  Then tees got sprayed thursday and fairways friday.  Brown Patch had already started showing on Thursday so just like that we are sunk and playing catch-up.  I am still confident in the initial chemical that we used and I believe that it let go of the rope early due to being less effective at the end of its life span and the weather driven disease pressure was through the roof.  Our second application should be in the plant well by now and stopping the spread of the Brown Patch so that the turf can start to heal.  However, extra moisture and clouds are pretty poor healing mechanisms.  

So this past week my rain gauge said we only got 2" and I know that may be hard to believe with as wet as the course is, but when an area reaches field capacity it doesn't take much rain before you see standing water and saturated ground.  So due to all this water at the surface, all the Brown Patch areas have started forming a nice black algae just in case it didn't look bad enough already.  This is really evident in the fairway troughs.  I have not noticed any algae on tees and I am thinking that is due to the deep tine aerification they got tuesday and wednesday.  Don't get me wrong, the tees are still soaked, but the holes provided the water a place to go instead of sitting on top. So, yesterday I took out our Air2 G2 machine and injected air into these saturated fairway troughs just to try to open up some channels for the water to find.

So bring on the cooler and drier weather and lets get things healed up to where we were at the beginning of July.  The forecast looks favorable through the middle of August so thats a good start.  As always, feel free to stop me on the course and ask me anything.  

Air2G2 Machine

I didn't want to wait until next month's blog to add this so here it is.  The monday after Stampede I went out with a new type of aerifier and treated a few areas on our greens.  Some areas I did in order to combat against traffic and compaction, and other areas I did were due to being the low spot in the green where all the water drains down to.  The machine is call the Air2G2 and it uses compressed air in order to fracture the soil and create more pore space for oxygen.  This also aides in drainage of wet areas.  The machine shoots 3 rods into the green and then ejects air out of the sides of the rods throughout the soil profile.  The rods do this at a 3" depth and then again at a 12" depth with each shot.  If you watch closely you can actually see the turf left up from the air injection.

The areas I treated were the lower putting green, the right side of #3 green, all of #5 green, the middle and left of #9 green, the left and front sides of #11 and #12, the valley on #13 green, and the valley on #17 green.

STRESS!

I have finally returned to write our next blog after over a month of hot and humid, bentgrass hating weather.  The month of June fit perfectly with the rest of 2020, meaning it was a complete mess.  Now before I get into the junk that circles inside my head all day, I want to say that I am pleased with the way the golf course is looking and performing.  Unfortunately, its not every day that I am able get the golfer's overview of the course with a calm head to see the beauty.  Mechanical breakdowns, heat stress, disease, and our new dirt moving neighbors on the back nine have been keeping me occupied lately. 
So..... I literally just went back out to the course for our evening shift after Stampede round 1 and I found the calm beauty I mentioned in the previous sentence.  It was a very welcome sight and brought my sanity level back up a bit. 

So as I am typing this, the day is July 10th.  As far as the weather goes, I feel like we have been through 3 Julys already.  With the heat and humidity starting clear back at the beginning of June, we started seeing fairway stress spots a full month before we did last year.  Also we had a week long stretch of 90 degree temps and low humidity which really dried the course down.  I felt like the course played perfect that week and was just on the good side of the edge of no return.  Its at that point where I hope for some rain or I get the spray tank out and apply a wetting agent.  I had to get the sprayer out.  And then it rained the next night lol.  We got about 2.25" in 4 days which reset the moisture level throughout the course.  Fairways and tees got consistently green again and we put some more water into the pond.  Then the humidity set in and made life outdoors miserable for both human and turf.  With the humidity comes disease pressure and we all know that bentgrass is highly susceptible, and it did not prove that theory wrong. 

Pythium Blight

Pythium is the scariest word known to a bentgrass manager.  It is a fungal disease that has the ability to wipe out an entire stand of bentgrass in 24 hours unless treated.  I saw our first case this year at the start of June when we received our humidity spike.  At the beginning of #5 fairway on the left edge as well as all along the left edge of #13 fairway.  These are both habitually wet areas and pythium loves hot and wet conditions.  It is insanely mobile and can spread by foot, mower, or water which is why it can wipe out its host so quickly.  I didn't catch the spot on 5 soon enough and we lost a good portion of turf.  I sprayed the disease and stopped its spread, but there is a lot of healing that needs to take place. 

So we got that tamed down for the meantime and then we got into the drier weather that I mentioned earlier.  Then when we finally got that much awaited for rain, it also brought along with it some more bad news.  The silt collection pond built for the new home development failed to contain the 2" rain and flooded the back 2 tees on #14.  Along with the water came all the mud and silt to boot.  This was a topdressing of the worst kind.  Aside from the tees being a swamp for the next week, once they do dry, they will continue to become mud slicks everytime it rains on them unless that silt and mud are removed.  Plus the sediment will suffocate the plant and prevent any drainage or air movement into the rootzone.  So.........I pressure washed the tees with a hose over the holiday weekend.  It didn't remove it all, but i did get a lot out.  Good thing I had a lot of flood cleanup practice at Deer Creek lol.  Once stampede is over I will be core aerifying those 2 tees in order to remove more mud and allow for drainage.  This will probably have to happen a couple times before I can rest assured that they will survive.  Until then I do apologize, but you may find your tee markers on the far forward tee if the white and the blue tee boxes are too sloppy.  I called the construction superintendent and he told me their plan was to beef up the erosion protection which I have seen they did.  I just hope its enough or I will have him on the other end of the pressure washing hose.

So here we are, we made it to Stampede week and things are coming together.  Practice round Wednesday comes along and my fairway mower comes to me and lets me know he has seen more Pythium.

                                                 
So here I go, driving up and down each fairway for the rest of the day and evening searching and spraying.  I ended up spraying 9 acres worth of Pythium Blight.  I'm so ready for November! 

One last thing to bring up.  If you are having a practice session on the putting greens please keep your feet moving.  If you keep standing in the same spot to hit putt after putt after putt, you will leave bruise marks on the green.  This time of year the bent does not heal so quickly and sometimes not at all.  If you want to continue to hit a certain distance of putt then please circle around the cup after each round of balls.

Ok, enough doom and gloom.  Like I said, once I had a calm couple of hours,  I got to see the course for what it is right now.  Stunning!

Where did the sun go?

I believe the sun does still exist, however I have no proof at this point.  A little sun would go a long way for the course.  Things are green and growing, but I can see a little yellowing in the rough due to the extended shade we are receiving.  Hopefully we get plenty of sunshine once this week of rain passes us by.

This season has not started out so smoothly, but I think the course is starting to get to a good playable condition.  Obviously the Covid deal has made things super weird, but we have dealt with a couple major watering issues that have slowed our roll.  A major component of our pump house control panel failed which prevented us from having controlled irrigation.  The component was the PLC or Programmable Logic Controller which tells the pumps how to run.  The PLC reads the pressure in the pipes throughout the entire system and relays info to the pumps to tell them how much water to pump in order to keep optimal pressure.  With the PLC broken, our pumps only knew 100% on or 100% off.  In order to water anything, I had to turn on enough heads throughout the course to keep the pressure below dangerous levels.  This meant a lot of driving back and forth from hole to hole to pump house and back again.  No Bueno!  Oh yeah, another thing....the part needed to be shipped from Japan in the midst of Covid.  It got repaired and things are back to normal and I have never been so relieved.  That is until the crew developing the new housing development ripped a 20 foot stick of our pipe and wire out of the ground to the right of 14 tees.  We are back up and running, but I am still very nervous watching them scrape earth right next to 12 and 13.  I talked with the construction superintendent to get an idea of their plan and timetable.  Hopefully he keeps communicating with me because there will be a few things that they do that will impact our operation as well as cart traffic.  The sewer line will be crossing the cart path just behind the black tee box on 13.  You can see where they have clear cut a path for that.  This will take out the cart path and our main irrigation line which runs right below the path.  I will work with their crew in order to ensure continued cart traffic and irrigating.  Cart path will also need to be moved around the 12 green area because supposedly it currently runs through the corner lot's backyard.  He thought they would be moving earth for a couple months before they were ready to start in on the sewer install so looks like July will be a heck of a lot of fun.

There goes the neighborhood.  Sorry, I meant here comes the neighborhood, wahoo.

I have had a few members reach out to me asking for my opinion on fairway divots.  The question is do I want divots replaced or would I rather just have them filled with sand.  This answer has a lot of variables so here is my best effort.  I would love for all the divots to be replaced and stepped down.  That works with an ideal divot.  If the shot is picked pretty clean and there is nothing but a handful of grass blades, then obviously there isn't anything to replace and sand would be the choice.  I think the best answer would be to replace what you can and fill the edges with sand.  Weather is going to play a huge role in the survival of the divot as you can imagine, but even if it scorches and dies, there will be something there for a ball to roll over smoother than a void. 

Here is a divot with some mass and then another with none at all and how I would repair both.

I am almost happy with the way the greens look.  I think some sun will help that tremendously.  We have been able to verticut the past 2 mondays which really helped ball roll by taking out some grain.  It also provided some nice channels to stuff sand into.  The more sand we can get into the green's canopy the better they will play throughout the year.  Sand will filter down into the green profile and help dilute the ever-growing thatch layer.  This will keep the green's surface firmer and scalp resistant through the heat of the summer when bentgrass wants to get puffy and soft.  Ideally I would lightly topdress greens every monday, but sometimes that isn't feasible so it may become more like every other monday.

This is a profile from the right side of #13 green and it is pleasing to my eyes.  I have labeled the thatch layer and pointed out 2 aerification channels.  As turf grows, it sloughs off dead tissue as it regenerates new tissue.  This dead organic matter is known as thatch and it continuously builds just below the crown of the plant.  If left untouched, it will act as a sponge making the putting surface soft and squishy, as well as keeping water and nutrients from getting down to the roots.  All of this is bad.  You can see that the rootzone gets lighter in color as it goes down.  The top is darker due to the organic matter that has built up over the years and the bottom mix is pure sand that has not been disturbed.  As you are about to see, our rootzone here at Staley is in really good shape, which is proof of good, continuous topdressing in order to dilute the thatch and organic layers.  The following are examples of greens that were neglected of good topdressing and aerification.

  

You can see how much darker these organic layers are from the lack of sand dilution.  The turf looks good on top, but I can almost guarantee these greens struggled to drain water and got pretty soft and puffy in the middle of the summer. 

It sounds like we are going to get a little closer to normal at the beginning of June with league play starting again as well as clubhouse events.  This is great news and hopefully we will be able to put bunker rakes and ball washers out soon as well as get rid of those annoying pvc pieces in the cups. 

That is it for this month, thank you again for reading my thoughts here.  Please continue to stop me on the course with questions or comments.