Green adjustments........

This week we started to adjust some of our green edges and fairway edges. Most green edges were adjusted to the outside by 2 to 6 inches depending on the green. The process is simple. I take a 5 foot piece of pvc and put it on the edge of the bluegrass or perimeter cut and put a paint dot on the green. In a perfect world the mowers would never miss their line and the adjustments would not be needed, but its hard to mow good on Saturday and Sunday morning when you slept in the parking lot.

The fairway adjustment are a little more abstract. I am trying to put each row of irrigation heads in the fairway. This is not possible on all the holes, but most fairways are being expanded in one spot or another.

We will also be going through all the tee complexes this fall to make any needed changes to the free flowing tees here at Hillcrest.

#14 fairway project...............

I could not take it anymore and decided I had to repair the uneven areas on #14 fairway that hold water way too long after even small rains. The areas hold water for so long ducks were starting to gather. Still on the late summer project list are repairs to a couple of collar areas, some more fairway interseeding, a number of stump holes to either seed or sod, and a couple of very small green surrounds to sod. I had to squeeze #14 in somewhere and this was the week.

October is reserved for adding sub surface drainage and re grading #8 fairway.

The lay of the land didnt leave a lot of options as far as subsurface drainage is concerned so basically we raised the area by about 3 inches and graded the section smooth with the surrounding fairway. On Friday we will be laying the sod.

This was a trial run for a couple of other areas that give us trouble coming out of spring and #14 has plenty of depressions and poorly drained areas that should be addressed, but this section is a nice start and fits our sod budget.

What a storm..........

OK, so we did not really need that. I dont know how much hail we got but I know it did plenty of damage to the greens, trees, and the flowers.

Today we did the leaf harvest around the pro shop and clubhouse, cleared all cart paths, backpacked all 20 greens, backpacked all tee complexes, and blow about 1/3 of the fairways.

Pat cleaned off the roof and we had a crew putting an effort into the pool but alas it was decided that it should be closed for the season as only a handful days remained on the schedule.

We double verticut the greens and then mowed them. They look good from the fairway, but not so much when you stand on them. The hail beat them up pretty bad but dont expect recovery to take too long either. We mowed about 1/3 of the fairways today and quite a little rough.

Tomorrow the game plan is to mow the greens and topdress the greens. Mow the collars and approaches and blow off some more fairways. Sunday we are going to roll the greens and backpack blow out the bunkers and on Monday we will start chopping leaves in the rough and putting back the bunkers. We will also send out a tree crew and at least look into draining the pool (that doesnt make the pool sound very high on the priority list does it, but it is up there, for real).

The olde girl will be back in shape before you know it. Have a good riverboat Days.

Extra water..............

What a nice picture.

With monthly rain totals not even reaching a .5 inch and multiple days with temps in the high 90's and 100's we started putting down some supplemental water where irrigation coverage is either light or impeded by trees. I like to turn these heads on for about 2 or 3 hours and then fertilize them. All the areas are in the rough and some water and food now will hasten their recovery when cooler temperatures and rain return.

This happened................

Saturday night of the Pro-Am we were up against a rain delay and it was a fore gone conclusion that some fairway mowing would have to be finished in the morning despite the fact that one of our units does have headlights. Then less than 1 hour into our mowing a hose broke making a beautiful stripe done the 12th fairway and pulled both mowers in because we didnt not have that particular hose in inventory.

The operator did everything right after he saw the leak and the hose broke where our technicians could not have seen the worn hose. Not exactly the straightest line he ever laid down though:)

Tee and approach aerification...............

Following the Pro-Am we started aerifying the tees and approaches on the golf course. We choose this time to do this labor intensive and important task for a number of reasons. One, it is the best time of year to aerify and avoid more poa growing into the voids in the turf. Second, our recovery time is very fast compared to moving aerification into October. And third, we have the man power to complete the project and really limit the amount of golfer interruption.

The process starts with pulling the plugs and then backpacking the cores off the rough onto the tee or approach. After some dry time our core harvester picks up the plugs and then we backpack blow off the remaining debris. Then we fertilize and water and the next day we roll if needed and mow.

Our game plan this year was to do about six holes per day starting with holes near the clubhouse on Monday. Tuesday we worked on certain holes to avoid interrupting any ladies and saving certain holes to avoid the back nine senior league shotgun on Wednesday. We did great on Monday and Tuesday but a few groups of seniors did have to fight some plugs on two approaches
Wednesday morning.

Next week we will start aerifying and interseeding fairways and again we will be doing our best to aviod disturbing golfers.