Finally - Course Opening April 9th!

It's been a long winter, but hopefully it will soon be a memory.  The course will open for the season on Wednesday, April 9, the latest opening that anyone around remembers.  Right now, the forecast is calling for nice weather towards the end of next week, so clear your calendars and get ready to come out and take some swings in the fresh air!  Yesterday we received 1.75 inches of rain and it's right now it's raining lightly and the course is extremely wet, so the status of carts on opening day will be determined when the day gets closer.

It will be great to get the course open, but the course didn't get through this brutal winter unscathed.  As is the case at many Chicago area courses, some areas of Poa Annua on greens and fairways were killed by the turf being buried under ice for over 60 days.  Our problems began on January 13th when we received nearly an inch of rain on snow covered, frozen ground.  Because of the frozen ground the water wasn't able to soak into the ground and left puddles that left many areas of the course encased in ice when temperatures went below zero soon after the rain.

Hole cut through the ice to take samples of the turf below

In normal winters, this probably wouldn't have been much of a concern because we usually have a thaw or two during the year that rids the course of ice, this year was obviously different.  Poa is thought to be able to survive at least 45 days under ice before damage begins to occur so when we started to approach that amount of time we began to worry.  (On the other hand, bentgrass can survive at least 120 days under ice.)  Throughout the February and March we brought samples of turf inside to monitor conditions and in some cases we didn't like what we saw, others appeared to be fine.  To help remove the ice from some of the worst greens we even removed snow ahead of warm ups.

#8 Green with snow removed, before all the ice melted.

So now that all the snow is gone, we have a better idea of what level of damage we are seeing across the course.  Overall, I believe that the course held up to the ice quite well.  For a course that is as old as it is, we are fortunate to have a high percentage of bentgrass on the fairways and tees, and even many of the greens have large populations of bentgrass.  Of the greens, #9 and #7 took the most damage, but most of the greens have some small areas that were damaged.  

Moving forward we will be working this spring to repair any turf that doesn't come back.  The first thing that we will be doing is placing covers on the worst greens to help warm up soil temperatures and get the turf to come out of dormancy faster.  Next week we will be seeding bentgrass into #7, #8, and #9 and leaving them covered to promote faster seed growth and recovery.  Those greens will remain covered for a few weeks and will require temporary greens to start the season, depending on the weather, the temporary greens may be necessary until the middle of May.  All the other small areas on greens that were damaged will be open and in play, and once the weather warms up to the point where seed will germinate and thrive, those areas will also be seeded.  

Fairway areas that were damaged will be treated on a case by case basis.  Most of the areas are fairly small and will be sodded, but some of the larger areas will be seeded and marked as ground under repair until they are ready for play and cart traffic.  

On a positive note, things are already looking better after yesterdays rain.  Some sun and warmer temperatures this weekend will go a long way in getting the recovery process started.  Stay tuned to the blog for updates on the work that we are doing to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.