Tournament Preparation

I hope everyone had a safe and very relaxing Memorial Day weekend! Here at Wolf Creek we were very active as the weather was good and had a great turnout of golfers over the weekend. As the temperatures continue to warm up so does the ground temperature. This is important to us as it triggers several things when it comes to managing turf. First off it should really get the Zoysia grass growing finally and hopefully we are done with anymore set backs of cooler weather that slows the growth down. I have started to see the fairways and tees really start to wake up. We applied our first round of summer fertilizer this week to try and help it to grow and recover. We waited until now due to the cool and damp weather you can breed a lot of zoysia patch by adding nitrogen so we are very cautious during the cool and damp times of the year. Also with the warmer soil temperatures comes the threat of disease on our cool season turf. So we have to be diligent with our water and fertilizer from now until the end of summer as the warmer/humid weather at night is a breeding ground for several different diseases. Starting today we have began our preparations for this weekends Wolf Creek Invitational. It looks like the weather is going to cooperate and we are going to have a great weekend of golf. On Tuesday morning we verticut the greens for the second time this year and applied another light topdressing. This will continue to help us keep the surface smooth and also insures that our turf on the greens stays tight allowing us to have good ball roll by eliminating the leaf tissue that was laid over and not getting mowed by the mower. The verticut also helps us to incorporate the topdressing sand better into the canopy of the turf where we want it to go. I attached another photo of the verticut lines on the greens prior to us topdressing them to show you what they looked like. Today we are doing some more patching in some thin zoysia areas on #3 and #5. I have continued to see recovery in some areas and feel that the warm weather and fertilizer will help these thinner areas recover. Enjoy the warm weather and sunshine over the next couple of days.