#17 cart path demolition..............

Today we started tearing out the asphalt cart path near #17 green.

Tomorrow we will do some more dirt work and set forms for our first pour which will cover about 100 feet. All of our plans depend on weather but I plan to pour on Friday and re-open the path for carts on Sunday.

My original plan was to pour on a Monday morning but being that the next Monday is the 4th of July that would
extend the project futher into July than I care for.

The second pour, measuring some 220 feet will be poured at the same time. Hopefully on a Saturday morning. I will post more updates as we get more finished.

Dead grass carp from #16 pond..........

Here is a dead grass carp we fished off of the pond bank yesterday. It was about 30 inches long and smelled really bad.

This fish is from the first batch of carp we introduced into the pond to control our aquatic weed problem. Two years after our first stock we stocked the pond with 30 more grass carp. The combination of biological control and chemical control has solved what once was a real problem concerning irrigation reliability and irrigation pumping equipment breakdown.

Tree damge and removal on #8

Here are some photos of the maple tree that went down last night (6/20). It really opens up the left hand side of the fairway. So many times we lose trees during summer storms and no one really notices unles they happen to be playing while we are cleaning it up. But this tree people are going to notice because it knocked down more than a few drives.

The high winds were not that damaging to the golf course and besides all the leaves and sticks it left behind Hillcrest came out pretty good. We will be picking up the debris in high gear leading up to the SDGA event this weekend.

Yesterday we removed the dead linden tree from behind #6 green. I am not sure why it died. We will discuss replacement during our next Green Committee meeting.

I also started spraying fairways for anthracnose and dollar spot. The application is one of our three budgeted fairway applications. The weather has been ideal for these turfgrass diseases and with steady storms and large amounts of rain expected a preventative application is in order. In a perfect world we would have been able to push our first fungicide treatment out to July 1st or later, but it isnt a perfect world.

Quick coupler installation.............

For years now we have been installing an irrigation add on called a quick coupler. Quick couplers make handwatering much easier and training handwaters how to actually handwater and how to take a part and put back an irrigation head is time consuming and risky for the turf. Quick couplers by pass staff messing with the irrigation heads and allow us to handwater more efficiently.

Currently on the course we have quick couplers on all but three of our green sites. We also have three couplers around the clubhouse for annual flower watering. We have been putting in about three per year since 2005 and will actually be finished next season. Each addition costs about $75 including fittings.

Above two staffers, make that one staffer, repair the dirt work after the installation.

US Open maintenance info..........

http://turf.lib.msu./edu/gsr/article/anon-open-6-10-11.pdf

This didnt work of course. If you want to look at this go to the right of the blog and click on the Vail page. It is amazing the specs for the US Open and how big the Congressional crew is (55).

fertilizing..............

The few days of heat really slowed down the rough which probably makes everyone kind of happy. This week we fertilized it and it started to rain again, but the very heavy rough is behind us now unitl next season regardless of our fertilizer application. The fertilizer is a slow release fertilizer and will mostly make it more healthy and look greener as we enter a very busy two weeks on the golf course.

We are also getting ready to start some tree trimming soon so not only is the rough thinning out but that punch shot we have all perfected will be easier too. Should I get credit for lowering handicaps? I think so.

Good luck in the upcoming tournaments and lets hope for some nice dry weather for a change during the Invite.