Saturday Course Conditions following MORE RAIN!

With the storms that passed through the club this afternoon, I made my way back down to the club to see what damage was done. The wind was minimal, I wish I could say the same for the rain. We received another 1.5 inches of rain. This puts our 7 day total at 6 inches! We will be working hard in the morning to get the bunkers back in shape, they are in bad shape. Unfortunately the greens are completely saturated and our maintenance goals for Saturday will need to be pushed to Sunday. We will be cutting the greens on Saturday but can't afford to roll.

Cart traffic will be restricted to paths only with blue flags being utilized. I will make a reevaluation in mid afternoon, but with 6 inches in 7 days I don't anticipate releasing carts until Sunday afternoon.

Number 1 Tee expansion

Last year while attending a Ladies Golf Committee meeting, concerns over the size of a few our tees were shared. I fully agreed with these observations. The 1st, 3rd and 7th tees are postage stamps and don't offer much room and in one case doesn't provide what the USGA designates as a tee box. While my goal was to complete some sort of rebuild of these tees last fall, issues arose that didn't not allow the completion.

Again this year, the concern over these tees arose and not wanting to wait until resources became available to rebuild, I have decided to improvise. Evaluating the forward tee on #1, there was plenty of flat area around the current tee box to expand the tee. Since the tee itself is not constructed of sand like the others, it would be easier to expand. Yesterday, I scalped the area where the proposed tee expansion would be. A white line is also painted to show the proposed new tee. The scalped grass will take sometime to recover, but the area is certainly usable. This is not the most ideal situation, but like other areas of the course, I am not one to sit back and wait, we will make adjustments when we can, an move on.

I am investigating the use of the unused tee in front of the white tee on #1. If I find that tee has been abandoned, I will strip the good sod from that tee and transfer over to the expanded ladies tee. If this is done the markers for the ladies will be placed in the fairway next to the tee until the sod is knitted enough to make a successful golf swing without injury to the golfer. Anyone with information on this tee, it would be great if we could hear what the situation is.

Green Speeds and Weather

I discussed in a post on May 23rd titled Green Speeds, how speeds of our greens can change. In the last seven days we have received over 4.25 inches of rain and with the extremely high humidity levels, the water is not moving out of the turf. Today we are not able to mow greens because they are saturated, however we are able to roll them.

My goal is to be extremely aggressive tomorrow through Sunday to push greens speeds back to our goal of 10'. We will be brush and cutting and possibly rolling tomorrow. Saturday we will be double cutting and rolling. We will make a decision as to our maintenance on Sunday based on the speeds we are able to achieve on Saturday. All of the above can change if we get the forecasted rain tomorrow.

Storm damage!

We got hammered last night here at the club. Stay tuned for an
additional update with photos. We will be cart path only today with
the 10th, 11th and 12th holes closed until tree work can be completed.

William Brown, CGCS
Regional Agronomist

Pegasus Golf Management

Sent from my iPhone

Heavy rains

In the last 24 hours we have recieved over 2 inches of rain. We will
be restricting carts to paths only until 10:00am.

William Brown, CGCS
Regional Agronomist

Pegasus Golf Management

Sent from my iPhone

Green Speeds

Today are greens are rolling 11' 2" on the stimpmeter. The greens are extremely dry at this point, with some rain these speeds may fall a bit. Again, our goal is 10 to 10.5'.

New Bunker Rake placement

In our last BOA meeting the discussion of bunker rake placement was addressed. Throughout my career in the golf business, I have had several different opinions and procedures for the placement of bunker rakes. Inside, outside what is the best for the player? It was brought to my attention in the bylaws for Hartefeld National it states the placement of the rakes are to be in the bottom of the bunkers. We have now instituted this new placement and are looking for stickers to be placed on our new rakes to ask to have rakes remain in the bunker. To the left you will see a photo of our 9th hole with the correct placement of our bunker rakes.

Getting Back on Track

It is been awhile since I have posted here. The water shutoff and got a bit warm and with the turf used to wet cool conditions, my attention was hyperfocused on transitioning the turf from April early May weather to Mid July/August weather literally overnight. All in all I think we did real well. We were able to keep disease at bay, which I contribute a lot to our fertility program this year. I am excited to get back to "normal", whatever that may be.

Other business has kept me extremely focused, that being the departure of our Assistant. Ken had an opportunity that may only come once and felt he needed to make a move. Transitioning into his position will be the Assistant from Broad Run, Sean. Sean will be a wonderful addition to our team. Sean will also be elevating his career to the next level as he will be attending the Rutgers Golf Turf Management program in the fall to earn his Certificate in Turfgrass Management.