CCN's recent report card - a report form the USGA Agronomist

It dawned on me the other day that I haven't posted the USGA's report from their visit in April.  So here it is, please take a minute to read the report.  It will help you understand the world of golf maintenance and some of the challenges we face.  

April 2013 USGA visit report

US Jr Amateur qualifier underway

The US Amateur Jr Qualifier is underway and thankfully the weather held out for us yesterday.  Seems the area east of us got hammered with rain, but we managed to only get a trace amount.  The course recovered very well from the 2.5 inches of rain on Tuesday and our dynamic duo of Trevor and Kenny were able to get the course all cleaned up yesterday.  Greens are running a little over 11 and the course is playing a little soft.  As the tournament director said, "Play hard boys, play hard!"

Scalped Roughs

For those that are still here and have been playing the course I'm sure you've noticed the roughs are still a little scalped. The reason why has to do with the 5 straight days of rain and not being able to mow. 

During the course closure I lowered the height of the roughs from 1.5 inches to 1 inch to purposefully scalp the rough down. This is a normal practice during the summer to eliminate the gnarled mess that the rough becomes through the golfing season. The scalping process was successful...and then the rain came and we were not able to mow the roughs again for 9 days. The new 1 inch height had grown to nearly 2 inches by the time my team was able to mow again. When we mowed the first time this week we effectively cut the rough height in half!

The good news is the grass can take the massive reduction this time of year. If I did that in the winter, the roughs would go to dirt and you would probably be asking the new Superintendent to start a blog. The roughs as greening up daily and the more my team can mow themt, the more the grass will be trained to live comfortably at the new height and not scalp. 

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain

5 straight days of rain! That might be a record for me in my golf career. All those days of rain means we didn't mow any grass either and today it's time to pay the piper. The majority of today's activities involved just trying to mow grass and then blow all the piles. Nearly the entire fleet of mowers went out today and we'll have to keep this taxing pace up for the next couple of days to play catch up. 

Soggy course update

Yesterday, Friday the 7th, the course received another .4" of rain.  That makes 5 straight days nothing except the greens have been mowed. We are going to attempt to mow the tees, collars/approaches and greens this morning. The rest of the course is still too soft to risk rutting up with the heavy equipment. Not sure what golf will be like but I think we will be open. 

Tropical weather

We have received over 3 inches of rain in the last 48 hours due to the tropical system moving through area and the course is soaked. Normally 3 inches of rain isn't a big deal, but when the rain comes and never stops the course doesn't have a chance to drain the soils. Additionally, we are currently under a tornado warning from all the high winds. 

Aerification week expansion, why the extra days

One of the fundamental things we all have to remember is that the golf course is changing constantly.  This means the things that we did last year, or the year before, might not be what we need to do now.  As the course evolves and changes, so do the maintenance practices done to take care of the course.  More often than not, this means the practices done need to be more intense...this almost always means it take longer.  Additionally, it's important to remember that in a 5 day closure I only have about 3.5 days to get any work done.  The reason for only 3.5 production days out of 5 days closed is one whole day (Friday) is used just to put the golf course back together for the next day's golf.  On the last day there is no work being done to the course, it's all cleaning up, putting yardage markers back in the ground, and mowing.  The other half day lost is due to weather.  Inevitably it rains, and when you get rain you also get lightning, just as it is doing right now, and that kills a half day worth easily.  Hopefully you only lose a half day due to weather, but it has been raining a lot so far in the early summer.

An example of the changing times is how we handled verti-cutting the greens this year.  Usually I would start verti-cutting the greens around April 1st.  However, this year's golf schedule as packed with play and events and there just wasn't time to do it.  It's not that we can just forget about the need to verti-cut the greens.  What causes the need to verti-cut the greens doesn't go away, it's pay me not or pay me later.  So during this week's course closure I am veti-cutting the greens 4 different directions to make up for the lack of early growing season verti-cutting.  This extra verti-cutting "make up" is going to add 1.5 days worth of work to the already packed schedule. 

Here is a small spreadsheet of all the activities that have to be done this week.  Also, keep in mind that these activities are sequential.  They have to take place in this order.  This is also why it is majorly important to have spare parts for machines and excellent equipment care to keep this running smoothly.  If an early process machine breaks down, the entire process grinds to a halt!!!

		Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Mon
GREENS
Verticut greens		X	X
Clean verti-cutting debris		X	X
Aerify greens		X	X
Clean off aerification cores		X	X
Sand greens			X
Fertilize Greens			X
Drag sand			X	X	X
Roll greens			X	X	X	X
Mow green					X	X	X		X
TEES & APPROACHES
Lower height of cut and scalp		X	X
Aerify			X	X
Drag			X	X
Clean off debris			X	X
Sanding				X	X
Drag				X	X
Mow					X	X	X		X
Fertilize					X
FAIRWAYS
Lower height of cut and circle cut		X	X
Aerify		X	X	X
Drag		X	X	X
Clean debris		X	X	X	X
Mow					X	X			X
Ferrtilize					X
BUNKERS
Adjust sand depths and edge		X	X	X
Blow out debris						X	X		X
ROUGHS
Mow			X	X
Reduce height of cut and mow again				X	X	X			X
Aerify				X	X	X			X
Fertilize						X	

As you can see, there is a lot of stuff to do and this doesn't include "projects" like edging cart paths or enlarging teeing grounds. 

Another major consideration for closing the two extra days is operating cost.  We all know that hardly anyone wants to play a course that has just been aerified.  To open Sat and Sun would entail the Golf Shop to someone at the counter, the Cart Barn to have someone there, the Kitchen to have cooks and dishwashers, and the dining rooms to have waiters and busers for a very, very limited number of golfers.  Tony, myself and Tim looked at the history of our course closings and the number of golfers immediately following and it just didn't make business sense to close for a week, open for two days, and then close for another day.  It's a good way to save some money during a time when making money with an exceptional product is exceptionally hard, let alone with a very poor product to offer.  The operational interruption is also at a time when the least amount of people will be affected.

First assualt of the 100 day war is complete

I'm happy to report that the Golf Maintenance Department team has complete our first aerification week without a hitch. I think we would all agree that we need rain desperately, but during aerification week it is best if the weather is hot and dry! The reason being, much like everything else in life, is that it is much harder to clean the place up than it is to make the mess. For us, when "the mess" dries out it becomes really easy to clean up because the grass plugs and debris do not stick together. We are able to break up the plugs and separate the dirt and sand from the organic plugs. The process of separating the sand from the organics makes it easier to cleanup because it removes a lot of the weight of the debris. So hot and dry is good when aerifying!

Our first priority of the week was to verti-cut the and aerify the greens. This time, instead of verti-cutting the greens once we verti-cut them twice in and "X" pattern. Since it was our first aggressive maintenance of the year I wanted to take the opportunity to try and eliminate as much thatch in the upper profile as possible. This is the business side of the machine. Notice the teeth are lined up vertical, like a roto-tiller. The teeth penetrate 1/8" into the turf canopy to just get at the dead material building up on the surface. They are not digging deep.



Here is a picture of the green's verti-cutter hard at work. All of the material the verti-cutter digs out is cleaned off.


The next step after verti-cutting is to clean off the debris. Most of the time we will just mow behind the first machine, but because there was so much stuff removed we just used a big blower and blew the stuff into the roughs.


After verti-cutting the greens and cleaning them up, it was time to aerify the putting surface. We use hollow tines to pull cores out of the green.



After the putting surface is aerified, all of the cores are removed. The aerification process serves two functions, remove compaction and remove organics in the soil profile. Here is a picture of the green's upper profile area. The darker area at the top is the organics that have built up over time and what needs to be controlled. You want some of this but not too much, which can lead to a lot of problems. This is what the hollow tines of the aerifier pull out. My goal through the course of the aerification season is to remove 30-45% of this material each year which should maintain a good balance of playability and agronomics.


Here the green has been aerified and it is time to remove the cores. Removing the old cores is a labor intensive job as it is all done by hand.


Core removal is a simple process. The staff uses these floating level lawn tools and slides them along the putting surface and pushes the cores to the outside edges of the greens. Once the green is cleaned off the crew scoops up the cores, puts them into carts, and hauls the material off.


The same process done to the greens (verti-cutting, aerification, and sanding) was done to the tees, approaches, and fairways. This year due to the intense tournament schedule we didn't do our normal fairway verti-cutting. Instead we used more of the same approach we use on the greens and lightly groomed all the tees, fairways, collars and approaches. I didn't want to rip the grass to shreds like last year and chance that it would recover in time with all the expected weather.

We still had grain issues in the fairways. So the grooming was done to control more grain issues as compared to de-thatching the soil profile. You still go from the swirled look of the grain


To what looks like I completely killed the golf course

Fear not, it will come back with a vengeance and be lush green

Here's what all that grain looks like once removed. In this picture I wanted to give you and idea of how much material was removed so I put my radio next to the debris generated. My radio is ten inches tall from the base to the top of the antenna. Pay close attention to how many stems are in the picture (all the brown stuff), and how little actual green stuff (leaf tissue) there is. All of the stems come from the grass laying over which creates the grain in the fairways.



You have heard me talk about sanding greens and have seen the postings I do, but what I haven't talked about much is the need to continually sand the tees, approaches, and fairways. The sand is what keeps the surfaces firm. Think of when you go to the beach and the waves wash up on the shore then all of the sudden they are gone, the water just seems to get sucked into the sand but the sand still stays firm. That is similar to what we want to happen on our tees, fairways, and approaches when water is applied. Although we want the soil to hold some moisture, I'd rather it drain really well for increased playability. Remember when we opened after the renovation and on every drive you would get 25 yards of roll after the ball landed? All of the extra roll was due to the ball hitting the turf that had not built up an excess of organics in the soil. So just like the greens, the other "short grass" areas need to have a strong soil management protocol as well. That management protocol includes regimented verti-cuttings, aerifications, and topdressings.

Another reason to maintain the fairways so firm is because of the over-all design of the course. The Country Club of Naples is a classic ground game style course. Meaning our course was designed to be able to bounce or run a ball onto the green. Every green here has a very large approach that enables the player to land short and still get the ball onto the putting surface. The only hole that you have to hit over a hazard when hitting to the green is hole 15, but the approach is 25 yards long. Additionally, the firm fairways allow for extra yardage off the tee. If you got an extra 25 yards of roll on 14 holes (the par 4 & 5's) that's an extra 350 yards you didn't have to hit the ball, and that's only on your drives. So you can see that maintaining a firm fairway can be a very good thing, but it takes a continual effort to keep it. Over time if the fairways are not maintained properly for firmness they will become softer and softer.

This past week I used approximately 384 tons of sand to top dress the fairways.

During our aerification process of the fairways in the past, we would find some of the remaining rocks that are close to the surface and the staff would dig around the large boulders and then they were removed and sodded over. This year we did not find any rocks that were large enough to dig up. All of those years of digging out the rocks has paid off!!!



No rocks found like this during the closure. I think we finally dug them all out!!!

Now it's time for some fertilizer and a little sunshine. I've got two weeks to get the course in shape for the Jr. Open Qualifier. Stressed....you could say a little!