Wet Conditions

After receiving about 6" of rainfall in the last week and half things are pretty wet here at Wolf Creek. However the sun has been out all day today and it looks like Saturday is going to be a good day as well for some drying out. Carts are still going to be on paths today with hopes that we may be able to get off on a few fairways on Saturday depending on how they dry out today. We are selectively mowing some rough areas and green bank areas around the golf course today, which should help out with the playability of the rough. Unfortunately we aren't able to get out and mow fairways or tees today as they are still really wet and full of moisture. I am planning to try and mow them on Saturday unless they are still too wet then we will have to wait until Monday unless we get another shot of rain on Sunday. The crew has been able to do a little bit more sodding on some zoysia areas this week. The wet conditions has obviously slowed this process down. Hopefully we are going to be able to get some more done prior to next weeks Timberwolf to help with playability in some of these high traffic areas. Next week we will start gearing up and getting the golf course ready for the Member/Guest event which starts on Thursday. We are keeping our fingers crossed that "Mother Nature" cooperates with us and helps us out so that we can have a great event like we are set up to have. Have a great weekend and I hope to see you on the tee in the very near future!!

Rain Rain Rain

I guess the moral of the story is you better be careful what you ask for. All spring we have been asking for some much needed rain and "Mother Nature" has delivered over the past 24 hours or so. Since about 2pm Monday we have received about 2.75" so far and it is still raining and looks like it is going to continue for a while today. The rain has fallen at a pretty nice soft and steady pace which is really good to allow a lot of it to soak into the ground and recharge the subsurface of moisture instead of just pouring down and running off. This also helps to keep our creek in it's banks and not cause any major flooding. The creek is full but not out of it's banks at this time. We were able to get all the rough, fairways, tees, and most of the green banks and tee banks mowed on Monday prior to the rain. Also on Monday we installed some more zoysia sod in a few thin areas on #1 fairway that are in the landing zone for tee shots. Our plan is to continue patching a few areas before next weeks Timberwolf on holes #7, 5, 8, and 18 if the weather allows us to do so. Have a great week and I hope to see you out at the club at some point this week when the rain stops!!!

Wind and Rain

"Mother Nature" has continued her trend of giving us up and down weather patterns and along the way has provided some much needed rain. On Sunday night we received .6" of rain and then on Tuesday night we received another .55" of very beneficial rain. Carts will be on paths today for most of the day at least. We will check it later in the day to see if things have dried out. Along with the beneficial rain that Sunday night's storm brought it also had some high winds with it that caused some tree damage around the golf course. I have attached two photos of a big limb that blew out of the tree behind #9 green and then a photo of some other tree limbs that fell on #4 tees. We had several limbs on the ground along with a bunch of little debris all over the course on Monday morning. Also on Monday and Tuesday we did our monthly solid tine venting on the greens. This was perfect timing as the greens were starting to not take the water as good prior to us opening them up a bit with the venting. Being able to do it and to catch a rain like we had on Tuesday night was perfect timing. We are going to continue to work on sodding zoysia in some of the thin areas around #4 approach, #1 approach and fairway, and #5 green side bunker. The golf course continues to perform well and is playing very well right now. I am extremely pleased with the repairs we have made and the progress that the course has shown coming out of the tough winter.

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.

Holiday Weekend

It has been an outstanding week of weather and activity here at Wolf Creek. The weather has been warm and full of sunshine and the maintenance team has been running at full throttle all week. We are still hoping for some much needed rain as we have yet to receive any significant amount this week. Last night it looked like we got a little shower enough to wet the pavement but not enough to really do any good. There are chances for the rest of the weekend so we will have to wait and see. The maintenance team has been busy working on replacing some more winter kill areas in our fairways on hole #8 and #4. We are hoping that the rest of the areas that are still somewhat dormant on these fairways will continue to green up like they are and eventually recover. Our plan is to continue to monitor these and give them some more time in the sun and warmer weather before we make our final decision to sod them. Another item we have been working on this week is spraying the rag weed crop in our native areas. I don't know if I have ever seen a crop this thick before! We will continue to spray these areas as needed. The rough and fairway turf have continued to shoot their seed heads out causing the fairways to look purplish and the roughs a bit of a yellowish white appearance. I am hoping that they are both getting to the end of this stage and then will start to settle in and harden off for the rest of the season. The seed heads make it difficult to get a good cut on these areas. The greens are continuing to perform unbelievably well so far this year. We have had a few areas around the greens get a little warm and crispy but the greens themselves have been holding their moisture very well. Since they have been holding the moisture so well we have been able to back off on the hand watering somewhat which has helped to keep them a bit firmer. Our goal is to continue to be diligent with our water management helping them to stay on the firm side as much as possible. One thing I would like to ask all of your help with is fixing unrepaired ball marks. I have been noticing an abundance of unrepaired ball marks on our greens. I think this is due to the greens being firmer and the balls bouncing more and rolling to the back of the greens. Players are then not seeing the marks towards the front of the greens where the ball actually hit. I would like to get everyone's help with this and together we can remedy this issue. I have included a little video showing the proper way to repair a ball mark. It looks like the weather is going to be great over the holiday weekend and on Monday. Hopefully the rain will come at night time so the golfing will be uninterrupted and we can also get our beneficial rain. Have a great and safe holiday weekend and I hope to see you at some point this weekend on the course!!

First Taste of Summer

The sunshine continues to shine this week and temperatures are supposed to be in the upper 80's for a couple of days. This is going to give us our first taste of some summer weather when it comes to the temperatures. Along with the warm temps we have had some very windy conditions that have really started to dry some areas out. I am really hoping that the chances of rain this week come true and we get some much needed rain. However we are not nearly as bad off as some of our counterparts to our south and west so I know it can get much worse if it wants to. We have had a good start to the week as things have gone very well. Monday we topdressed the greens to continue to help keep them as smooth and firm as possible. The greens have been behaving extremely well so far this year. Our root development has been as good as I have seen in my time here. We are finding roots consistently at a 6.5" - 8" depth pretty consistently. I downloaded a picture of a 6.5" core that I took this morning and it shows a little white root hanging out the bottom. I actually broke them off on accident but they are at least 6.5" down and continued in the hole a ways more which is tremendous. Depending on if it decides to rain or not we might do another venting of the greens later this week to help us continue to promote the rooting and keep the oxygen and nutrients moving down to the roots. We are also continuing to do some patching of some winter kill areas in our fairways. Our latest one we sodded was #8 approach area. I have seen some nice recovery in a lot of the areas over the last week or so. The Frost from Friday - Sunday however will set them back another week or so from really growing, as it is hard for the zoysia plant to reverse it's growth habit from thinking it needed to go into dormancy with the frost to actively growing again with the warmer temperatures. We will continue to monitor these areas and repair them if needed. A good sign that the zoysia is starting to think about growing again is the fact that it started shooting it's ugly purple seed heads. This will go on for about 2 weeks and then it should stop so if you were wondering what the purple hue is in the fairways this is the reason. Enjoy the sun and have a good week!!

Cool Temps as Promised

The weather forecasters were right on the money this week with the forecast. Temperatures have been on the cool side like they predicted. This morning we had one of the hardest frost I have seen and temperatures were 29 degrees at 6am here at the golf course. The up and down temperatures shouldn't do a lot of damage to the turf with it only occurring today, however it doesn't help out our zoysia areas that we are trying to get to grow and finally come out of dormancy. Frosty mornings will set it back a bit but hopefully with next's weeks forecast high temperatures in the mid 80's they will start to grow again and continue to recover. This week we have been extremely busy prepping the golf course for the KGA Kanza Cup event and continuing to work on our sodding and routine maintenance practices around the course. We have had a great week of work and have gotten a lot mowed and repaired and I am feeling good about where we are going into the weekend. Over the last week or so the greens and roughs have started to slow down growing. The roughs is due to the fact that the bluegrass/fescue are starting to shoot their seed heads out and the weather conditions have been drier. The greens is also due to the weather but it is more to the growth regulator application that I mentioned last week. This product shuts down the vertical growth of the grass forcing the plant to concentrate it's efforts to developing a good and healthy root system. This also helps to keep the ball roll on the greens at a more consistent rate through out the day as well. The course has really come alive over the week and things are starting to get into their form for the year. Have a great weekend and hopefully you all are able to get out and enjoy the great weather and play some golf!