Spring Aerification

Eventhough the turf is hardly even growing right now, we still need to plan our aerification to ensure that we have quality turf for the season.  We will be aerifying the greens on Monday, April 18th (weather permitting), so be aware of this date when making any golfing plans.  This date gives the greens a few weeks to heal up and be in prime condition for the Men's Mixer on May 14.  The tees and collars will also be aerified, but we will probably wait until the week after the greens so that we can focus on getting all the greens aerified, topdressed, and cleaned up in one day.

What Happened to Spring?

Just last week, we were having a great early start to the golf season.  Quite a few members made it out to enjoy the weather and the golf, and it was great to see all the familiar faces that I haven't seen in a few months.  Now I'm afraid it may be a little while before I see you all again, the 10-day forecast doesn't look promising.  So far this week, the sun has been scarce and it's been raining off and on, hopefully this rain doesn't turn into the dreaded white stuff.  We have been lucky with the rain though, some other places in the Chicago area have had much more rain than we have.  Over the course of the past few days, we've received about 0.9" of rain, and other places have gotten well over two inches.  In the summer time we can usually soak up this amount of rain, but with the cold cloudy days, the golf course has gotten very wet and saturated. 

This return to winter does have a silver lining for the grounds staff though.  It's allowing us to methodically chip away at our spring cleanup with a smaller staff as opposed to bringing more staff in and scrambling to keep up with mowing on top of the clean up effort.  After a few days of hard work, the sticks and branches that fall on the golf course have all been cleaned up.  Now it all needs to go through the chipper, a job that will be saved for a frosty morning when we can't get out on the golf course.  Cleaning out all the debris out of the bunkers and getting them raked is up next.

A winter's worth of sticks and branches.

For those of you who have made it out to play, you may have noticed the "new" bridge on the right side of the 16th hole.  The week of the golf course opening, all the wood that made up the bridge was replaced because the old wood was rotting and quickly becoming a safety issue.  A new rubber mat to provide traction for walkers will be added to the bridge soon.

The remains of the old bridge alongside the new frame.



The new decking.



First cut

Along with opening the golf course to play today, we also started cutting some grass.  The greens and fairways were cut for the first time today.  Just over the course of the day I noticed the greens get greener, hopefully the rest of the turf isn't too far behind.  If it doesn't rain too much tonight we will cut the tees and collars tomorrow.

It's good to see stripes again.

Golf Course Opening Thursday, March 17th

I'm glad to say that I have to eat my words from my first post on the blog.  Originally, I thought that there was no chance we would be able to open the golf course as early as we did in 2009, and now, we will be opening the exact same day as we did then.  The course will be open for play with carts (weather permitting of course) on Thursday, March 17th at 11:00a.m.

The small skeleton crew that we have working on the grounds staff has been hard at work the past two days.  Yesterday, we spent the day working at cleaning the sticks that litter the course every winter, and today we spent the day blowing debris off the greens and the tees, and also got a start on rolling the greens.  Tomorrow, we will finish rolling the greens, finish blowing off the tees, and continue to clean up the course.  When we open, we won't have all the winter debris cleaned up, so please be patient with some of the mess as we continue to clean it all up after we open. 

Thursday's forecast is calling for the temperature to be in the 60's, so make sure to come on out and enjoy some St. Patricks's day golf and the early opening of your golf course!

First signs of spring.

Although there are still patches of snow on the golf course and some pretty big piles in the parking lot, some plants are beginning to get ready for spring.  The daffodils near the front drive of the club house are starting to poke out of the ground.  Hopefully everything else isn't far behind.


Another sign that I just noticed around lunchtime is the sound of Sandhill Cranes flying overhead.  They fly over this area in November and in March in their migration to and from Canada and Florida.  They typically fly at pretty high altitudes, so they probably wouldn't be noticed if it wasn't for their loud calls.  Take a look up at the sky next time you hear this sound.

 

USGA Green Section Article

The green section record is an electronic publication the USGA publishes that focuses on the grounds maintenance part of golf.  This week there was a good article explaining why aerification is a necessary evil.

http://turf.lib.msu.edu/gsr/article/bevard-putting-3-4-11.pdf

March is Here!

After a very long (and still going) winter, March is here and I'm sure that many of your thoughts are starting to turn to golf.  Unfortunately, we are still three or four weeks from the dates that we are typically able to open the golf course to play.  Stranger things have happened though, in 2009 we were able to open on March 17th, but we are going to need some drastic changes in the weather to make that possible again.  Although it may be somewhat warm in the afternoon, it is still going below freezing at night and keeping the soil frozen.  When the top layer of soil thaws, there is nowhere for the the water to go creating extremely soft and easily damaged turf, so it is very important to stay off the turf this time of year.

Now that the snow is melted, we have been able to get a good look at how the turf made it through the winter, and everything is looking good.  There are only a few areas that are showing any signs of winter kill, and as of now, the fairways, tees, and greens, are clear of snow mold disease.  All we need now is some warm weather to thaw and dry out the course and we will be ready to go.