Timberwolf 2015

I would like to first apologize for not posting recently. Unfortunately I got injured a week ago Thursday and broke a bone in my foot that required surgery on Tuesday. All is good the recovery is moving along slowly. I hope to be back at the course as soon as possible once all the pain subsides. I will be a bit limited on crutches but I hope to be back very soon.  Fortunately for me I have unbelievable Assistants and crew that have done a great job in my absence.  This past week we saw temperatures soar into the upper 90s  and heat indexs rise into the 103 degree range. The golf course faired well and held up nicely.  The maintenance team was extremely busy all week preparing for the 2015 Timberwolf, which is our annual member/guest event.  From all indications all preparations and course conditions went well. Thursday night we received about 2.75" of rain along with some high winds that caused there to be a delayed start on Friday allowing the staff to get the course cleaned up and ready to play. However things weren't to bad as some parts of the city got hammered and had significant tree damage and power outages we only had a few limbs down, wet fairways, and a little water in the bunkers.  Along with the Timberwolf starting we were able to open our new practice putting green.  It has held up well through the heat and seems to be doing great. Just a reminder that the green won't quite roll like our normal greens this year as we still have to baby it along for this first year.  Our mowing height is a little taller and we aren't able to roll it as much. It will continue to mature and our hope is that next year it will be close to the same as the others after a year of maturing and growing.  Also this week our team worked their tails off and got a majority of the Zoysia spot sodding done on the fairways prior to the tournament.  Conditions finally dried out enough in the sod farm to allow us to cut some sod.  Fairways/tees continue to do great with the warmer weather and the cool season roughs have held up well during this heat wave.  I hope everyone had a great week and have a great weekend. The weather looks great to be outside enjoying it!

Installing new zoysia sod

New putting green ready for play!

Drying Out and Some Heat

What a change in the weather we have had over the past 7 days or so.  The cool wet weather gave away to mid 90 highs and mid 70s for lows.  These temperatures really helped us in getting things dried out, however they made things interesting when it came to managing the cool season roughs.  As a turf manager the last thing you want to see is a bunch of moisture followed closely behind by mid 90's degree temperatures.  This pattern doesn't allow the turf to establish a good solid root system and on top of that it breeds disease as the humidity levels give the spores and fungi a play ground to swim around and infect turf plants.   So needless to say we have been extremely busy this week trying to get caught up on all the mowing and clipping management and we also were busy applying control products for diseases on our greens and in our roughs.  We were able to get it out in time to control most areas however there are a few areas, especially where we flooded, that the disease was a bit more severe.  We have sprayed these areas and they should eventually recover over time. The temperatures cause problems for shallow rooted grasses such as our Kentucky Bluegrass as it doesn't hold up to the traffic and heat as much as the Fescue.   We have been doing some spot watering in some of the cart traffic areas and in and around the green complexes to help the turf recover.  Coincidentally our Zoysia grass fairways and tees have absolutely exploded over the last week.  Our fairways and tees are really starting to green up and grow.  The turf team applied a fertilizer this week so they should continue to grow and fill in and become a lot more consistent then they have been coming out of the slow Spring.  Our zoysia farm has dried out  so we are going to be starting some zoysia sodding in a few of the thin areas in our fairways.  I don't know how far we will get as the extended forecast looks rather bleak with rain chances of 50% or higher every day for the next 10 days.  We will work as hard as possible to try and get as much done as we can.  I attached a picture below of our fairways showing how good they look after they have dried out and we got a good mowing on them.  Also I attached a photo of some bird damage that we had on our #17 green.  The birds were digging for some sort of insect and really did a number on the green.  We are applying an insecticide today to try and help with this issue.  As you can see there is always something new happening around here and it isn't always related to weather or golfers!!  Have a great weekend!

Zoysia Looking Good!!

Bird Damage on #17 Green

Rain Just Keeps Coming

For some reason this year ole "Mother Nature" has decided to grace us with a lot of rain so far this spring.  Like the past couple of weeks this week has been a soggy one.  Not as bad as some of the others, but course conditions are still very wet as we received another 1.25" of rain giving us about 2.25" for the week and bringing our May and June total close 11" of rain.  Luckily the creek stayed in it's banks last night and this morning and flooding wasn't a big concern or issue.  The creek is unbelievably full right now so crossing our fingers that it has time to drain down before the next round of rain comes either later today or over the weekend.  Between the rain events we have been able to get some mowing done in select areas.  Thankfully we had two dry days this week so we were able to take advantage of them and stay somewhat caught up on the mowing.  Course conditions are such that we were unable to mow the greens this morning.  The maintenance team is working on getting the bunkers put back together and doing some general clean up around the golf course picking up limbs, silt, and debris that was left behind by the storm.  We hope to resume our normal greens maintenance over the weekend barring anymore major rain events.  Hopefully everyone will be able to get out and enjoy their family activities over the weekend.  If you are coming out to play over the weekend please be as careful as possible with your carts and their tires driving down the path.  It doesn't take much right now to cut a mud track in the turf as things are extremely wet.  Have a great weekend!!  

June is Here

What a wet month the month of May was!  One of the wettest months on record according to researchers and weather forecasters.  I can believe it as I have never in my five years of being at Wolf Creek seen this property as wet as it was this past weekend.  Luckily we were still able to host the annual Wolf Creek Invitational only losing 9 holes of competition to the weather.  However at times it looked like it was going to be questionable to even play any of it.  Hopefully we will get a nice dry week this week and get caught up on the mowing and applications that we couldn't get done the past couple of weeks.  Today we are solid tining the greens to open them up a bit after the wet weather we have had.  This practice will help dry them out and supply the roots with some much needed oxygen after being saturated for so many days.  I couldn't have been more happy then I was over the past couple of weeks with our greens.  They have stayed pretty firm and consistent through the wet soggy weather.  This is a testament to our agronomic program and shows that what we do to try and keep our infiltration rates (how fast water moves through the soil) as high as possible really pays off.  Also today we are applying another light topdressing to the greens to continue to help them stay firm and as consistently smooth as possible.  Our rough mowers are out this morning trying to get as much rough mowed as they can.  Most of the areas we should be able to mow, however there are still some wet areas that we will have to leave and hopefully come back to later in the week.  Our plan is to try and mow fairways and tees on either Tuesday or Wednesday depending on when they dry out enough to get the mowers on them.  We are also planning this week to do some applications in our roughs for disease prevention and weed control that we haven't been able to do with the wet conditions.  Lastly our #5 creek project held up extremely well over the past month with all the water that has been thrown at it.  We didn't have any wash outs or erosion issues on the slopes.  The only blemish we had was it looks like we lost a little bit of our rough in front of the bunker due to it being under water for so many consecutive days.  We will be replacing this turf once conditions dry out here and at the sod farm where we get our sod.  I have attached a few pictures from today showing the solid tine on the greens and the topdressing.  I hope everyone has a great week and I look forward to seeing all of you here at the Club soon. 

Venting of the Greens

Solid Tine Holes

Topdressing Greens

New Putting Green