Archive for June, 2010

The first “major” of the year is behind us and all of the stars aligned to make for an enjoyable weekend for all involved.  We followed the Men’s 3-day member guest up with a double shot gun start the following Monday as we hosted the Allied Senior Championship.  Next Monday is the “Corporate America”  observance of Independence Day.  With such a busy schedule it becomes difficult to find a time to perform needed maintenance on the golf course without disturbing play.  Since we want the course to be nice for tournaments and we don’t want to disrupt Holiday or weekend play we are sometimes forced to do things during the week of normal member play, just to get them done.  This week we are todressing and fertilizing greens on Tuesday.  It will be nearly impossible for us to do this and stay ahead of the first groups teeing off at 8:00 AM.  We try to minimize our impact on every day play but sometimes we are left with no options.

The fescue areas are growing in nicely around the course.  Golfers are however wearing paths going down the bank on #9.  I remember the “cow path” going down to that green when I first started here in 1994.  When we reconstructed those bunkers in 1995 and added the stairway behind the green we had a hard time educating golfers to “please use the stairs” but eventually with persistence we succeeded and eliminated the dirt walking path.  It seems with our most recent renovations we need to start the process over again.  The walking paths are very unsightly and once they loose the turf cover they start to erode during heavy rainfalls creating playability issues and an even bigger mess.  Is it really too much to ask for golfers to walk the extra few yards to use the stairs to help keep Taconic looking and playing better?  We have ropes up at the top of the hill to discourage golfers from walking down through the fescue, hopefully everyone will do their part and start using the stairs once again.

Summer is here!  The golf course is in great shape and we have been having some stellar weather.  The greens are rolling terrific right now, smooth, fast and true.  We are having some struggles on the practice putting green.  When that green was rebuilt last year we sodded it with a bentgrass/annual bluegrass sod.   The bentgrass portion of the sod is not doing well in the shaded areas.  If you remember our old putting greens were nearly 100% annual bluegrass due to the shading of the practice green by the maple trees.  Annual bluegrass is a more shade tolerant grass.  One area of particular concern is the part of the practice green that is closest to the first tee.  This part of the green has been getting the brunt of the wear as most players only venture onto this portion of the green to warm up before going off.  We have moved all of the hole locations out of this part of the green to try and give it a break from the traffic.  Ideally we would like to get more morning sunlight onto the green, the alternative is a slow process of having the bentgrass slowly thin out and annual bluegrass slowly fill in which could take several seasons.

Even with the recent rainfall we continue to have below normal precipitation and normal to above normal temperatures.  In other words good golfing weather.  The course is playing nicely with the ball roll on greens back to where we want it.   Hopefully everyone is finding the time to get out and enjoy it.   We have been using white stakes with blue (back), green (middle) or red (front) caps on them to indicate the hole location for players.  The stakes are located just off the back of the forward tees.  We have cut some holes into the green caps to allow the white stake to show through to hopefully accommodate those having difficulty seeing the difference between the blue caps and the green caps.   Small white stakes with green caps are being used to direct traffic.  With the increased use of 3 wheeled pull carts we have found it necessary to keep this traffic off of the collars on certain holes where it seems that just about 100% of the people with the pull carts use these spots.  There is a sign that is directing carts to the outside of the bunker and the stakes going from the edge of the green to the edge of the bunker.  Golfers using 3 wheel pull carts need to avoid going through these areas.  We do not want the pull carts on the collars.  If there is not enough room in to go in the rough between the bunker and the green then these pull carts need to be pulled around the outside of the bunkers.  Thank You for your cooperation.

We have had some great golfing and growing weather the past few weeks and finally received some much needed rainfall over the weekend.  The course is playing nicely and the last few spots of damage on the greens are filling in, with #7 being the only green left with anything of consequence.  We will continue to work on improving ball roll as we lower the mowing height on the greens again this week.  They should be rolling pretty good by the end of the week.  When we mow greens, which we do daily, we don’t always mow the edge of the green.  The “clean-up pass” as we call it is varied from day to day so that we don’t wear out the turf around the perimeter of the green.  We cut the edge every other or every third mowing unless we have a tournament.  On the other days we either skip the clean-up pass altogether or we mow a half clean-up which is mowing a half mowers width in from the edge of the green.  While this can look unsightly it does not affect the play of the game and it helps to ensure good quality turf around the perimeters of our greens.