Hurricane Weather

6" of rain over the weekend.  Good news is the course handled it very well and the grass loved it. Bad news is that it's dry enough to mow now...

Battle of 1000 slices; victory for the good guys

This past week's closure is now officially gone, and the healing process is underway. The residual scars of the millions of holes and slice lines are still there, but in a few weeks you won't be able to notice. Greener pastures ahead. 

Since we just bombarded the course with millions of holes and all but the most hardened, die-hard loyalists have ran for whatever "decent" course they can find on the reciprocal list, I am utilizing the extra time on the even slower summer tee sheet to do some extra work this week. Since the majority of our concentration has been on the short cut grass, it is time to do something for the roughs. 

Ever look at Donald Trump and wonder just how long his comb-over hair really is? I mean it's got to be 5-6 inches from base to tip if you stood it straight up. Yet, because it's laying down it doesn't seem that long. Well, that same sort of comb-over hair do is how the the roughs get as well. Right now we are cutting them at 3/4 of an inch but if you actually combed the grass straight up its almost 2 inches tall. 

So I rented this turf comb to stand up the grass to prep it for a little trim. 

Notice the difference between the right and left. Want to guess which one we ran the turf comb through? 

Once we stand the turf up we come in and mow it multiple times in multiple directions....over and over and over and over again. 

You can see the difference in just one pass of the mower on the right side. Lots of leggy grass stems removed and getting closer to a true height of cut. 

The goal is to produce a tightened, high density turf that is standing straight up. This will help hold the ball up, as well as make it easier to get a golf club through the turf without chopping out a large beaver pelt type divot. It's a slow process but the end results will be worth it. 

Day 3: bombardment over, now switching to tactical

Today was a great day for the golf maintenance team. To my amazement, and even after a mid-day rain, the guys finished all the heavy aerification and heavy verti-cutting....that's all the greens, all the tees, all the approaches, all the collars, and all the fairways. I should of bought some stock in Goodyear because at our rapid pace, at the heavy settings we were going, we went through a whole lot of drive belts! 

Another great event at the Club today was a USGA sponsored field day featuring all of my maintenance practices, to share with and learn from all who could attend. It was awesome! Tony gave us golf carts and we caravanned around the course observing and discussing all the different maintenance practices going on. It was like having a giant practical application lab class. We tried some new stuff, had some new equipment demos and generally shared industry knowledge. 

 

So now that we are all done tearing the place to shreds, it's time to start sanding everything. First will thing we will do are the putting surfaces and green surrounds. This should take most of tomorrow morning. After that we'll move on to tees, approaches and fairways at the same time. 

Lots going on and so much accomplished. It's been brutal hot too. Some of the jobs that the guys do are not fun. Believe me when I tell you, I've done them all and some really stink. Yet, nobody on my wonderful staff complains, gripes, or shows any hesitation. They get their marching orders and hit the course everyday with a vengeance. So to say thank you to my hard working guys during these closure weeks I usually grill something for them to eat for lunch. Well tomorrow they are getting mother of all BBQ lunch specials, aptly called the "Bacon Bomb!" It's one of my favorites to slow grill at home so I left a little early today and went and bought all the ingredients and made them at my house for tomorrow. Each one of the "bombs" is made of 4 pounds of pork sausage stuffed with cheese, onions, sweet peppers, mushrooms, and some rib rub seasoning. It's easy, just lay the sausage out flat about 1/2" thick, put on your goodies and the it's rolled into a log and wrapped in 2 pounds of a bacon basket weave. 

It takes a lot of food to feed my guys. That's 12 lbs of pork sausage and 6 lbs of bacon. Ohhh, mama!

Here's what it looks like when done. 

Can you smell that? Oh, man does it smell good and taste even better. I'm so fortunate to have such a great staff. They deserve all the credit for how great the course is. Without them showing up everyday and rising to whatever challenge I give them the course wouldn't be the same. They deserve, and are worth, the extra effort. 

The Country Club of Naples hosts a USGA field day

Today the Club hosted a field day for Celebration bermudagrass managers. There were around 45 in attendance and everything from summer cultural practices to winter time fertility was discussed. 

Since we are right in the middle of the heavy summer maintenance stuff it made for a great hands on, see it first hand type experience. The idea was to share experiences and ideas amoungst those who deal with it everyday. 

Great event! 

Day 2, heavy bombardment continues

Not a lot of words today, mostly pics with captions. You'll get the idea....

More of this today. Heavy fairway verti-cutting 

Ground view 

After cleaning off the debris from verti-cutting its time to circle cut. Name sake not hard to figure out. 

Heavy verti-cutting collars and approaches 

The goal is to completely remove the turf canopy and dig out the thatch underneath. 

This is 4 red tee after heavy verti-cutting. To a southern grass guy, this looks perfect. To a northern grass guy this looks like it's time to update the resume. 

No it's not a medevil torture device, it's the business end of verti-cutter machine. Watch your fingers and toes! 

More to come....

Course closed. Do not enter, War Zone!

Today is the first day of the second closure and right out of the gate all hell is breaking loose...on purpose. Not only do I have my 19 guys going all out, I've also got two contractors in doing separate work as well. 

By dawn's early light the fun begins with heavy vertical mowing of the tees. 

And when I said heavy vertical mowing I meant HEAVY!

This sort of turf organic material / thatch removal is needed to maintain the firm playing surface. All of the short grass areas (tees, approaches, collars & fairways) will be vertical mowed in this fashion. Then aerified and heavy sanded. 

Along with the heavy vertical mowing this morning the greens are being lightly vertical mowed then arrified. 

The fairways are being aerified

The landscape grasses are being trimmed 

And the Royal Poinciana trees are being removed from 14/18. 

The reason for removal is due to the Royal Poinciana's messy nature of dropping limbs and huge seed pods all the time and their being completely deciduous during the golfing season looking dead when everyone is here.  For now, the large Royal Poinciana by 15 green will remain. The Poinciana trees will be replaced with some Oak trees. 

Holding our own

Well not holding everything, thank goodness. The drainage system is still exceptional at getting rid of the excess water. It seems that the daily down pours have turned into smaller Noah's Ark type rains. 

These sort of weather alerts are becoming a norm for SW Florida. Fortunately Trevor and Kenny have their game face on and are managing the course in seriously great shape considering all that is against them. 

As I am writing this post it looks like the end of days outside and we are getting just the edge of the weather. I think the weather alert wasn't severe enough.