Course is Opening April 27, 2013

This is what the course looked like yesterday morning, full of a lot of snow, but today it is 90% all gone. Course opens Saturday morning but it will be a little wet and there are some rough spots here and there. The annual bluegrass did not enjoy the long winter and much of it is definitely not green. For the most part the only turf loss appears to be in the bowls and pockets in some of the fairways. The front of #16 green is also in pretty tough shape, there are some fairly large areas that do not look like they survived the winter. We will be evaluating it over the next few days as things warm up and take quick action to get it back in shape as soon as possible. With only a couple days of being able to prep the golf course for the opener I just want all the members to know that certain things might not get done. We will do our best to get through as many bunkers as we can, I predict there will be snow still in some of them along with some leaf/stick debris. Our plan is to mow greens Saturday morning if they are firm enough for equipment traffic, some of them at this point are not. They will be clean and playable regardless. Do to remaining snow and wet conditions throughout the course, including our cart crossings in fairways, there will be no golf carts until conditions permit. I'm predicting carts will be allowed on paths only Monday or Tuesday of next week.

So here we go...

What A July, What A Wind!

How many days with 90+ degree weather so far this year? I think we are at 25 and counting. The month of July was something that is for sure. We had multiple days with soil temps at or over 100 degrees, it was a challenge keeping the turf cool. Collar areas took the brunt of the stress and there are quite a few poor spots to show it. We will be sodding a couple of the worst areas with bentgrass sod from the nursery area, and aerifying, seeding, and topdressing all the collars to help with a quick recovery. The recent cool down has been greatly appreciated that's for sure.

And now for the topic everyone has been talking about the last couple of days, the storm that blew through on the 3rd of August. Here are pictures to give you an idea of the damage and cleanup challenges we are facing right now. We hope to have 75% of the work done this week and the rest finished up by midweek next week. In all we will lose 17 trees due to the damage caused, some completely came down but many are so badly damaged that they need to come down. There are hundreds of hangers and fallen branches. Once the course is cleaned up and the hangers have been cut down we will start with the removal of the trees. A huge thanks to the members that showed up Sunday morning to help rake and pick up sticks, the effort is really appreciated by the staff. And a special thank you to Dean Geiger for the continued help he is giving us to load and remove brush from the golf course.

Not Too Much Cleanup Thankfully

One casualty from the storm last night. We got about .4" of rain and I'm not sure, but I think the wind gusts were in the 50 mph range.

When Lightning and Tree Meet

I was looking through some pictures we have taken over the last couple of months and ran across this one I though I would share. It is of a large Ash tree behind #1 green that was hit by lightning on August 22nd. The tree was hit much higher then the top of the picture but this shows all the things that happen when the moisture inside the tree expands in a instant. The bark has been blown off in streaks going up and down the trunk. The sod has been blown off around the base of the tree and along some of the shallower roots. We will be keeping an eye on the tree to see if it is going to make it, but from what we have seen in the past it should probably survive the strike, thought the quality of the tree itself is usually degraded.

When The Stars Align...

Or in this case; When the temperature, humidity, and dew point align we get one heck of a disease outbreak.

( Brown Patch #11 Fairway - 2011_07_22 )

( Pythium #11 Fairway - 2011_07_22 )

This last week has taught us some new things and reiterated some of the lessons we have picked up along the way. From the 3" of rain we got leading into the weekend to the 5 days of record dew points and high temps. The factors leading to a severe disease outbreak aligned and bam! there it was. I am showing you pictures of an untreated par 3 fairway so you get an idea of what the worst of our disease issues look like now that things are in remission because of the weather change.

Due to the costs involved for preventively spraying fairways for pythium we take a more treat-it-when-you-get-it approach. And when we do spray we try and balance disease control with cost as much as possible. It can cost as much as $10,000+ to treat all 24 acres of fairways just once for Pythium with a good control type chemical, and perhaps only a few thousand for a more knockdown with less control type of one. This past week we had to make that very decision of which one to use. Over the weekend we knew the conditions were perfect for a disease outbreak, and for the most part we had things protected which is why we did not see much of a problem come Monday. By the time we headed home at the end of the day on Monday we were still looking disease free. When we got to the club on Tuesday morning it was a whole different story, fairways and tees did not cope well with 4 days of intense disease pressure... The driving range tee was a sea of fungal mycelium (a cotton like growth that is an active sign of certain diseases, Pythium in this case). The fairways were much similar, though the active Pythium was isolated to low wet areas and not quite so rampant as the Brown Patch that was working 'kinda all over'. Our tees also had signs of active disease and needed treatment. We proceeded to treat the entire golf course and get the disease in check to limit the amount of damage that would take place. While Brown Patch does not necessarily kill massive amounts of turf like Pythium will, it can definitely do some damage.  Since it looked as though the favorable conditions would break in the next day or so we decided to go with the less expensive chemical option and be sure to maintain vigilant scouting for the days to come.

Is it over and behind us? All I can say is we made it through the first onslaught and kept most turf in decent shape. There are some larger patches of fairway that Pythium did kill, we are seeding and topdressing those areas to encourage quick recovery. Some more problematic areas will get aerified, seeded, and topdressed within the next week. So why did I leave #11 fairway untreated? I often leave untreated fairway turf, usually a par 3 like #11 or #4, as a barometer of what diseases are active and when. And it happened that we ran out of chemical with only #11 fairway left to spray, so we will use it as a check and also experiment with a couple of seeding methods to determine what might work best for when this happens again. Because I know it will happen again, hopefully much later then sooner.

Hole #16, What's Going On.

05-10-2011

05-10-2011

05-11-2011

05-16-2011

05-17-2011

Here are shots to summarize the work so far of the bunker renovation taking place on hole 16. It is expected to be completed by the end of the day today and sod should go down tomorrow sometime. In about 2 weeks we should be able to open up the new bunkers and surrounding rough providing the weather cooperated and the new turf roots down good. 

And on another note, #16 green will be open for play starting Monday the 23rd. We have kept the height of cut a little longer compared to the other greens to encourage better growth, especially once it starts getting traffic, and overall it is in great shape. There are still some thin spots but the bulk of the damage down the center of the green has recovered very nicely. Once the younger plants have matured a bit more we will start a topdressing program, same goes for #7 green, which should help with the thinner and uneven spots...

If this weather can start to stay more typical for this time of year we should have the turf back in no time.

Progress on #16 Green

( 2011_04_05 - #16 Green )

( 2011_04_22 - #16 Green )

Here are before and to-date snapshots of #16 green, we seeded and covered on the 13th of April. While we do not see a lot of seed germination taking place, the weather even with a cover has made it difficult, the good turf under the cover has become much more vigorous then anything left open. We'll keep you up to date...

#16 Green Seeding

For the most part the golf course is in really good shape for this time of the year. We have gotten a first mowing on all the fine turf areas: tees, greens, approaches, and fairways. Things have greened up considerably in the past week, and most of the thinner areas in the fairways from snow mold damage are going to heal without much input on our part. The few greens that are damaged are a little different story however, and the seeding process is all figured out. We will not be covering #7 or #4 so we are waiting to seed them until next week when the freezing temps should be behind us. #16 got the treatment today and we have put a cover over it, taking it out of play.

( 2011_04_13 - Verticut in two directions #16 green )

( 2011_04_13 - Job Saver tines on #16 green )

We started with the verticutters and went in two directions, and followed that up with Job Saver tines in the aerifier. They create about a half-inch round dimple in the green for getting topdressing and seed into. So then we topdressed, seeded, and dragged the green. When all that was done we fertilized, watered, and covered...

( 2011_04_13 - Watering after seeding process #16 green )

( 2011_04_13 - Covering up the damaged section )

Now we just need the weather to cooperate, a quick warm up and some good growing weather. By keeping the traffic off and covering the green it will allow us to greatly speed up the process of recovery during this unfavorable time for seeding and establishment.

Most good, but a little bad.

( 2011_04_05 - #15 Green )

While most of the greens, and the rest of the turf for that matter, look like this... Which is pretty good considering the snow mold pressure we had this winter and the ice layers that covered most fine turf areas for the better part of the winter. There are a couple of issues you will see when you make your way around this opening weekend...

( 2011_04_05 - #16 Green)

Here is a good overall shot of the entire 16th green and the extent of the turf damage it has. This is the worst of the three greens that got damaged this winter, 4 & 7 being the other two. You can also see in the picture the amount of snow mold that the rough areas have, it is drying out nice and the rough should not have much of an issue growing out of it. The greens on the other hand will need some extra care. We have a few options, and over the next week or so when we get a much better idea of how large the dead areas will be, we will determine the best way to go about getting the greens back into shape. In a lot of the less damaged areas on these greens there appears to be a decent amount of green tissue which should aid in recovery once things get growing.

( 2011_04_05 - Snow mold and Vole damage #6 )

Here is a picture of a nice double wammy. Not only did the mound behind #6 green get over run by snow mold, but the voles decided it was a great spot to hang out over the winter also. Rough areas like this will just take a bit longer to recover then areas that did not get hit.

Over all we are in pretty good shape and with the breezy weather the past couple of days, not to mention the sun, the course had dried out very quickly. The range is open today and the course opens this Saturday. Our plan is to start getting the first mowings done next week if the weather continues to be good. The long range weather forcast looks like it should be pretty nice, maybe a few sprinkles here and there but it does not sound like any soaking rains... It appears it should be a nice weekend to get outside, let's hope so.

A Little Damage, A Little Disease

( 2010_07_29 - #17 Green Showing Damage/Disease )

The heat and humidity have began to take its toll in a few places. Our main issues have been with the fairways, though they have been minor and have even started to show signs of healing. Our teeing surfaces are not so much disease ridden as they are divot ridden. We struggle with some of them because of the size, that being too small for many of them, the par 3 tees on #4 and #16 being the worst. We do topdress and seed throughout the season to try and keep as much turf on them as we can, and not just by filling divots but using the topdresser and broadcasting seed. For the most part the other tees are in good shape and are not much of a issue.

The greens on the course have been in super shape for most of the season. Until recently we have had little to no issues with the turf, and that includes the notorious spots on #8 and #16. But a couple weeks ago we started to see some disease pop up on a few of them. Anthracnose being the main problem, and this is nothing new since it has occurred almost every year that I have been at IVGC. We are on a preventative chemical program for our greens, which means we are spraying fungicides on about a 14 day interval for most of the summer. Even with that schedule we can still get disease, it just shows you how tenacious some of the turf pathogens can be. There are also other factors that make the turf more susceptible, other then temps and humidity: low mowing, lean fertilizer program, and irrigation/drainage problems are a few. And on top of the disease issues we also had some mechanical damage caused by our riding greens mower and turf groomers. The height of cut was too low for the tri-plex to provide a good quality cut and the turf groomers were down, this tufted up some of the softer/spongy areas on our greens and scalped them out a little.

So what are we doing about it? We continue to stay on a regular topdressing program, a light layer of sand every 14 days on our greens. I have bumped up the fertilizer rate a small amount to give the turf a little extra growing power. We have raised the height of cut back to our normal 0.125" and added a extra rolling or two during the week. And we are looking into a verticutting program along with the topdressings which should aid in firming up those softer spots more so then just the topdressing.