Course Updates

Well, despite 20″ of rain and 10″ of snow during September and October we still managed to get everything done that we set out to do.  It was not a very good fall for golfing or for being productive on the course but we know how everything needs to average out so hopefully we have good weather ahead for 2012.  This week the grounds staff is busy finishing up preparations for winter including spraying all of our fine turf areas to protect against snow mold fungi, dormant seeding greens, topdressing greens, deep tine aerating greens, roping off greens, continuing leaf clean-up, bringing in all the course supplies for the winter and covering a few greens to give them a little extra push this fall and into next spring.  We had a great last week of the season for golfing and we all know how quickly the weather can turn on us in the Berkshires so we don’t wait until the last minute to get ourselves ready for the inevitable.  By the end of this week we should be pretty well set to handle whatever winter brings our way!

Sod is being delivered for #8 approach and collar today.  Once we lay the sod we will rope off the collar and approach but we will open the green back up for play.  It is important to keep foot traffic off of the new sod.  We will place a ball retriever on the approach for players to reach out and get their ball without walking on the turf.  If we find golfers walking on the new sod we will have to put #8 green temporary for the rest of the season.  Due to a change in the weather forecast (imagine that) we will hold off on doing #12 green until the beginning of next week.  We used more sand and sod on #8 than originally planned and we have more materials on order for next week to finish up #12.  By next spring these areas will be ready for play and will be a tremendous improvement over what we had before!

This week we aerated the collars and approaches on #8 and #12 green and filled the holes with sand.  The weather looks good for the beginning of next week so we are planning to strip the sod off of these 2 approaches and collars and add a layer of topdressing sand over the filled aeration holes and grade it out.  Then we will bring in a commercial bentgrass sod and re-grass these areas.  They will be out of play for the rest of the season.  We will rope these areas off and it is critical to keep golfers off of the new sod so it can root for the winter time.  If we find golfers are not staying off of this new sod it may become necessary to make temporary greens on these two holes to keep traffic off of the new sod.  I plan to have the sod delivered on Tuesday and to have both areas done by the end of the day on Wednesday of next week.

Fairway slicing was started in Mid September this year.  Due to the excessive amount of rainfall all of our renovation practices have been difficult to complete and we have fallen behind schedule.  Through the first week of October we have sliced #2,3,4,6,15 & 18 fairways with our machine.  Because we are behind we hired a contractor to help get the job done.  On Thursday October 6, the contractor came with their machine and started to slice #10 fairway.  After a couple of trial passes on the top right of the fairway which seemed to do a fine job, he started down the middle of the fairway.  He would get about 40 feet and we would see damage so he would stop and re-adjust his machine.  This happened about 10 times before I finally pulled the plug on him and told him to go get our machine for the rest of the day.  All but the very center pass on #10 fairway was done with the same machine that we had already used the week before to do other fairways on the course.  On that Thursday we did #10, 11 and #13 fairways, all on the same day with the same machine.  We had quite a bit of tearing and scalping in spots on #10 and 11 but not so much on #13.  This is normal for this practice and the creeping bentgrass actually responds well to being aggressively dethatched.  I think the biggest reason we are seeing more than normal tearing in spots is because of the amount of time between slicings in combination with the wet weather and lush thick growth.  The last time we sliced fairways was in early April before the golf course opened to try and keep member disruption to a minimal.  In past years we would do this mid to late May so we were a full month ahead of schedule.  In the fall we usually would get this done late August to early September but because of the rain we are at least a full month behind.  That is an extra 60 days or more of growth between slicings.  This is one of the practices that more frequent applications will result in less disruption per application and we need to make sure we get a third slicing in next season to try and keep the surface disruption to a more tolerable play level.

Golf Preservations out of Kentucky arrived at Taconic Golf Club today to install the sub-surface drainage on the twelfth green and the eighth green and approach.  The green that they are working on will be closed and a temporary hole will be in play until the drainage work on that green is completed and then they will move on to the next area.  It is expected to take one and a half to two days per green to complete.  Obviously this work can’t be done in the rain so weather will dictate which days they are working on the course.