Course Closing

The golf course will be closed for the winter starting on December 3rd.  The forecast is calling for some final "bonus days" for the close of the season so make sure to get out and enjoy the golf course a few last times this weekend. .  Closing now will allow us to blanket the greens with a thick layer of sand, which is our final process to prepare the greens and the course for winter. 

We close the golf course in the winter to protect it from winter damage and to provide the best possible playing conditions in the spring.  Obviously, the grass isn't growing, so any divots, ballmarks, or any other damage to the turf has no chance to recover until the course comes out of dormancy.  Also remember that when we have a mid-winter warm up, that is the worst possible time to be on the course.  The top inch or two of soil will thaw but the soil deeper in the ground stays frozen.  Water that is trapped in that upper layer of thawed soil causes the surface to be extremely soft and susceptible to footprinting and damage to the root system of the turf is possible. 

I look forward to seeing you all enjoying the last weekend of golf, and of course to seeing you all when we open the course again in the spring!

#5 Approach Drainage

There's an old superintendent's adage that states that the three keys to good turf are drainage, drainage, and more drainage, so that's what we have been doing over the past few years.  Our latest project is a new line across the approach to number five green.  This is an area that holds puddles after rains, and tends to be very soft and wet even in dry periods.  We have installed 200 feet of new drainage lines that will hopefully help dry this area out and help get surface water off the fairway faster.  We should have this project completely wrapped up by the end of the day today.

When the bottom of your trench fills with water, you hit the right spot!

Backfilling the trench over the new pipe.

Fall Aerification Schedule

After a July that seemed like it was never going to end, August is flying by and it's time to start thinking about getting the golf course aerified so that it's ready and healthy for next season.  So here is the planned schedule for the fall aerification process.  Please take this into account when you are making plans for golf in September.

Tuesday, September 4 we will be aerifiying and topdressing the tees.  If all is going well, we will probably also be aerifying the collars around the greens.

September 17, 18, 19 the fairways will be aerified.  Most years we are able to finish this process on Monday (while we are closed) and Tuesday, but depending on weather and equipment issues, it is possible for it to take longer.  Please remember that the days that we are working during play, nine holes will be closed in order to expedite this time consuming process.

September 24 and 25 is when the greens will be aerified.  We will try our best to get all 18 holes done in one day while we are closed, but there is a chance that we will have hole closures on Tuesday the 25th to finish up the work.

We thank you for your patience while the course undergoes this process.  If there are any changes to the schedule due to weather or other circumstances, we will keep you updated through the blog.

13 Green Vandalized

Last night 13 green was vandalized.  The vandals used the bunker rakes and the flagstick to dig a few holes and punch some deep ballmark-like holes in the green.  We have already repaired most of the damage, but there may be some spots on the green that are bumpy. 

This green was already struggling, and this is one more thing that we didn't need to deal with.

Summer Stress Update.

Although the pressure of the drought and heat have been eased by a two inch rainfall on Wednesday night into Thursday morning and lower temperatures today, this summer's weather has definitely begun to take its toll on the golf course, and  I would expect that we will be back to watering very quickly, as the recent rain only put a small dent in 2012's moisture deficit.

On the course, not all of the problems of 2012 are visible on the surface, but some are.  Twelve and thirteen fairways have had some problems with dry spots, and combining the dry areas with 100 degree heat have resulted in some small areas that have died out.  Many of these spots were a grass called rough bluegrass that is very susceptible to heat stress.  Rough bluegrass is tough to kill completely though, and most of the time when the weather cools off, it will come back.  On the greens, the heat is really stressing the Poa Annua and it took on a very pronounced yellow color in many areas this week.  Without cool nights to cool off the soil and the plant, there has been no chance of recovery from the stress of the day which just compounds the stress.  Today's weather is going to go a long way towards taking some of that pressure off the turf.

Below the surface, our roots that were down deep until recently, have been creeping up closer to the surface.  With shallower roots on the greens, you will most likely see softer greens from here on out.  Without the deeper roots to get the water down in the soil, we will need to keep the soil near the surface wetter in order to provide the shallow roots with the water they need to keep the plants alive and healthy.

Now, along with the stress from the heat we are seeing some Anthracnose disease developing on 13 and 17 greens, with 13 being the most noticeable.  The disease is the bronze colored spots that are concentrated in the right center of the green.  Anthracnose typically only effects Poa Annua plants, and on 13 you can see where poa and bentgrass are mixed, the bentgrass is unaffected.  Anthracnose can be difficult to control once it has begun, so we apply preventative fungicides beginning early in the season to ensure that it doesn't develop.  Dr. Derek Settle, the turf pathologist from the CDGA, came out yesterday and confirmed my diagnosis of the disease.  He also believes that we may be dealing with a strain of the disease that is resistant to a certain group of fungicides, which would explain how it broke through our preventative treatments.  Samples of the greens were taken, so that more testing could be done to determine if this is what we are dealing with.  The greens have already been treated with a fungicide without resistance problems, so hopefully the disease is now stopped and will not spread to much more area.  When I find out the results of the testing I will post it up on the blog.

Rain!

It's been a long time since we've seen a cup full of water.  Taken Saturday, June 30.  #6 Green

Mother nature seems to have changed her mind very quickly, and because of that, our mindset is changing very quickly.  Typical for the Chicago area, if you don't like the weather, wait an hour.  Seeing as how we've been so focused on managing the drought conditions this year, you would think that we would be able to relax some with the rains that we have been seeing the past few days.  Unfortunately, this is only partially true.  While we may not have to worry about dragging hoses around, we now have to worry about disease pressures that we have not really had to face much this year.  Superintendents are rarely happy with the weather.

Rains on Friday morning brought us 1.3" of welcome rain, and a storm with heavy rain rolled through just a few minutes before I started writing this, my guess is that we have received about another half inch of rain.  Now with the forecast showing sustained heat and humidity for the at least the next week we will be shifting our scouting of the course from dry spots to pythium disease scouting.  Pythium Blight is potentially the most devastating disease that we see in this area, as it can kill large areas of turf within hours if it is not controlled quickly.  It is carried by water and is usually seen in wet, low areas and can only survive nights with high humidity and low temperatures above 70 degrees, exactly what we will be seeing for the coming week.  All of our bentgrass areas (tees, greens, and fairways) have had preventative treatments applied, but it is still possible to see breakthroughs so we will have to stay on our toes to make sure that any pythium that pops up is treated curatively and not allowed to spread.

So, although our mindset has changed for now, this summer still continues to be a challenge, and it will be a long time before we are in the clear.

Ouch

This morning we had a massive hydraulic oil leak on one of the fairway mowers on the 15th fairway.

This is about as bad as it gets for this type of situation.  It was just about the longest pass the operator made on this fairway and it started at the beginning of his pass.  The leak was behind him, so there was no chance for him to know what was happening until he turned to make is next pass.  When he turned and saw it, he did the right thing and drove through the rough directly to a cart path and stopped the machine.

Unfortunately, the damage was already done as this grass has essentially zero chance of survival.  Tomorrow we will be resodding this area with sod from another fairway, probably the small fairway on 16 short of the creek, and that area will be reseeded.  Another fairway needs to be used so that the turf we bring in will closely match the turf on the rest of the fairway.  The sod lines will be visible, but we would like to make the transition as disguised as possible especially since it's directly across the middle of the fairway.

Fairway Dry Spots

In a "typical" year, we apply chemicals called wetting agents to the fairways, tees, and greens to prevent a condition called localized dry spots (LDS).  With this year not being very typical, and due to some sprayer malfunctions we were unable to apply the wetting agents to the fairways before the condition developed.  Once the LDS sets in, it can be very difficult to get the soil wet again.  Our hope was that the rain we received last week would help alleviate the problems but it didn't.

This picture of the morning dew shows the polka dotted pattern that the dry spots have made on #1 Fairway.  The dots that you see are areas where dew was unable to form because of the dry soil, an evenly moist soil will have consistent dew on the grass.  (It also shows part of our cure for the problem.)

It's a little difficult to see in the picture, but if you look closely at these two plugs taken just inches apart from each other, you can see that the plug on the left is bone dry and just crumbles when it comes out of the ground, and the plug on the right is evenly moist and holds together.  The one on the right is how it should look.

So far these areas have not wilted or died, but if we don't do anything to get the soil to accept water before the summer heats up we could be looking at fairways that are dotted with brown spots.  This week you will notice that we are aerifying selected fairway areas with solid tines, these are the areas that have LDS, and the holes are the first step to fixing the problem.  Next, we will spray a wetting agent that is specifically for curing dry spots over the holes and then the areas will be watered heavily.  This process will get the dry spots to take water and allow our preventative wetting agent applications to to their job.

Picture Recap

Sorry that it's been a few weeks since I have posted anything on the blog.  We have been very busy working out on the course, but I've still been gathering material for the blog, so here is a picture recap of the work we have been doing the past few weeks.

Cleaned out a drain line near 6 fairway that was VERY clogged with roots.

Weeded and Mulched the areas surrounding the 8th and 9th tee.

Flower Delivery.  They are all in the ground now.

Rose bushes are blooming like crazy.  (I know, we didn't actually do that.)

Mice made a cozy home in a satellite box and chewed up all the wires.  This,
combined with a separate issue cause the pond on 14 to overflow and do...

...this.  

It's been a very busy spring for the grounds staff, but I'm starting to feel like we are catching up with the to do list.  Many of the projects on the list have been crossed off, and now we are finally getting in to a normal routine.  I hope to see many of you out on this course this Memorial Day weekend, with the forecast calling for 95 degrees on Sunday, I know that I will be seeing a lot of the course!

Cart Etiquette Reminder

This week we added some directional cart signs to the golf course in order to reduce cart traffic and wear in the approaches and on the greens surrounds.  Please do not drive past these signs as you drive towards the green in the fairway.  Follow the arrow that is on the sign and drive your cart to the nearest cart path that goes around the green.  Also follow these rules when using carts:

• KEEP CARTS AT LEAST 30 FEET FROM ALL GREENS AND TEES
• USE CART PATHS WHENEVER POSSIBLE
• KEEP ALL FOUR WHEELS OF YOUR CART ON THE PATH
• AVOID DRIVING ON BUNKER BANKS AND STEEP SLOPES

Remember that this is your golf course and there are many things you can do to protect it.  Using these guidelines for proper cart usage you can reduce the damage and wear that carts can inflict on the course.

May showers brings May flowers?

After an extremely dry April, mother nature seems determined to make up some lost ground.  In the past week and a half we have received over four inches and rain, and it is still raining here on Monday afternoon.  Until yesterday the rains had been fairly modest, but had been enough to make the golf course green and moist again.  Yesterdays rains were not quite so kind.  A thunderstorm rolled through early in the afternoon dropping .8 inches of rain in just over 30 minutes, and more storms rolled through over night hammering us with another 1.3 inches!  It has been sprinkling for most of the day today with the rain becoming steady at times, not a good way to dry out the course from yesterdays deluges.  The course is completely saturated right now, and the chances of allowing carts on the course tomorrow are pretty slim.  As always, we will be constantly evaluating the cart situation so pray for sun and wind!

Last night's storms were very active with lighting, and this tree on the west side of 18 fairway got the worst of it.  The lightning blew some pretty large chunks off the tree and some of the debris from the tree was thrown 60 feet.  There was also another tree struck by lightning on the fenceline to the south of the 14th hole during the afternoon thunderstorm.  These trees should be a reminder of why it's important to get off the course when there is lightning in the area. 

Bunker Edging

Last week the crew put in some hard work re-establishing the bunker edges that have crept in over the years.  Areas where the grass had grown into the sand were cut out and sand was pushed back up into those areas. 

Some areas where the mechanical bunker rake drives out of the sand were also cut out so that those areas can be sodded.  In order to hold back the sod and the soil that is necessary to recreate the edge, small plywood walls were installed in those spots.  When the course dries out this week, we will add soil and sod to finish up this project.  The plywood walls will have to stay in the ground until the sod has rooted enough to hold onto the soil, which could be a few weeks. 

Winter Tree Removals

Over the past winter, we removed about 30 trees from the golf course, most of which had little impact on the course and have not generated any concern.  A few of the removals, one in particular, some members have questioned.  I want to address these concerns and explain the reasoning behind that removal, and the tree removals in general. 

The tree that has generated the most interest is the ash tree that was to the left of the seventh fairway about 100 yards from the green.  Many people feel that this tree was key to the golf hole in making an errant tee shot difficult to advance to the green on the players second shot, and its removal makes the hole easier.  This tree was removed for the same reason that many others were removed from the golf course, it was an ash tree that was nearly dead.  Despite the fact that this was one of the ash trees that was receiving treatment for the borer, the top three quarters of the tree was completely bare, and given the ash borer damage that we have seen over the past few years, the tree would have been completely dead this year.  In order to avoid having a barren tree in such a high profile area during the golf season, the tree was removed. 

Unfortunately, as the ash borer damage progresses we will be seeing this more and more over the next few years.  Many ash trees that looked fairly healthy last year have either not come back at all , or have very few leaves this year.  So far, the remaining twelve trees that are being treated appear to be healthy, but only time will tell if the treatments will continue to be effective. 

Obviously, the dead and dying ash trees made up a majority of the tree removals this year, but a few other notable trees had different reasons behind their removal.  The silver maple tree near the alternate tee on the second hole was removed to allow full use of the alternate tee.  With that tree there, we were unable able to use the alternate tee to spread out the damage from divots.  The large silver maple trees behind the seventh green and the seventeenth green were both removed for the same reason, turf health.  These trees were blocking sunlight and robbing the greens of moisture with their roots that extended into the green, causing very weak and fragile turf on the back of those greens, and on the eighth tee.

Tree removals are not taken lightly, and all decisions regarding the removals are based upon the improvement of the golf course, whether it is for turf health, tree health, or playability.  As always, the grounds operation is an open book.  If you have any questions regarding tree removals or any other golf course matter feel free to ask me or our superintendent, Matt Harstad. 

Bob Schoenau

Grounds Committee Chairman

The Helicopters Have Landed

The dry and warm spring has caused the silver maple "helicopter" seeds to begin falling very early this year.  They began to rain down in the high winds this week, and really made a mess of things.  It is actually almost a month early for them, last year they didn't start falling until the end of May!


These seed pods are a major problem for the grounds staff and golfers every spring.  Instead of going about our business in the morning and getting everything mowed for play, we have to blow off the greens, tees, an fairways before mowing which consumes a lot of time and labor.  For golfers, the problem is obvious, if a green isn't freshly blown off, they are in the way of putting.  We will do our best to keep the course clean, and the greens puttable. 

Besides blowing helicopters, we also completed a project that we have been putting off for too long.  Monday and Tuesday we installed irrigation on the new blue tee on #13.  Last years wet summer allowed us to put this project off, but the dry spring we are having forced us to get it done so that we don't have to stretch two hoses from the twelfth fairway to hand water it.  In two days we were able to lay all the pipe, install two new sprinklers, and wire everything to the irrigation satellite box.  The best part is that everything worked on the first try!

Tamping the soil on top of the pipe to reduce settling in the trenches.



Good Luck Adam!

This weekend is my assistant, Adam Lencke's, last weekend working at Calumet.  After working here for four years, he has accepted the head superintendent position at the Course at Aberdeen in Valparaiso, IN, and will be starting work there on Monday. 

Over the years working here, he has put a great deal of hard work into the golf course here, and has been an excellent assistant to me.  He will be missed, and I'm sure that he will miss Calumet also, but this new position is a huge step and a great accomplishment in his young golf course management career.  If you see him out on the course this weekend, be sure to stop and wish him will in his new position. 

That Doesn't Look Right

At some point in time, many years ago, a clay tile behind the 12th green was installed to drain part of the shop area.  When it was installed they must have realized (too late) that their line was going to run into a tree.  Instead of slowly moving the line away from the tree, a sharp S-Curve was made with two 90 degree fittings to go directly around the tree.

Obiviously, this drain was always clogging up because of the restricted water flow, and if any debris came through the pipe, it would get stuck in the drain and cause it to backup.  This week, we were finally able to fix this problem for good.

That's better.  Nice and straight like it should be!

Course Opening Wednesday March 14th!

The news you've all been waiting for!  We will open the course to play for the 2012 season Wednesday, March 14th at 9:00 a.m.  Thanks to a warm winter and a warm spring, this will be the earliest opening the course has ever seen.  Right now, the plan is to be open with carts, forecasters are not calling for much rain so I don't see that changing.

Tomorrow and Tuesday the grounds staff will be working hard to finish our preparations for opening.  The greens and tees will get their first mowing, and we will be blowing off the fairways in order to provide you with the best possible early season conditions.  This warm weather will really be kicking our operation into high gear, as most of our chemical schedules are now going to be running two to three weeks ahead of normal and we will be seeing the grass start to green up and get growing.  It's looking like it may be a busier spring than usual.

The warm and windy weather we had over the past few days allowed us to get out and begin preparations for opening the golf course.  Yesterday we were able to finish cleaning off the greens and tees, and finish rolling the greens. 

Adam Rolling 11 Green, with Roberto blowing off 17 Tee

Course preparations were moving along quite nicely until last nights rain, and with the colder temperatures coming in tomorrow, the golf course will not be opened this weekend.  As of right now, we don't have date set for opening the golf course, but the forecast for next week is very promising.  Keep an eye on the blog over the next few days for updates.  Blog readers and twitter followers will be the first to know when the golf course is opening for play!

Hello Winter - For a Few Days At Least

Winter finally decided to show up for a few days, and the frozen ground has allowed us to get to some tree work that has been put on hold until now.  A tree service was here yesterday and today to do some large tree removals and to do some trimming.  All in all, they removed four trees, two of which were causing turf problems.  The first was behind 17 green, and was shading the green from the south, where the strongest summer sun comes from.  It was causing some areas of the green, especially the back tier, to be very weak.  The second was behind the 7th green near 8 tee.  The back of the green has been getting weaker because of tree roots growing into the green and from the tree blocking the morning sun from the east.  Removing this tree will also help the back of the 8th tee, as it will now receive afternoon sun.  Morning sun is better, but getting afternoon sun as opposed to no sun will help this very high traffic area. 

Getting Started on 17

Almost Down

Yesterday, they were able to finish all the removals that we were not able to do in house, and today they have been working on trimming up some tee shots that have gotten over grown.  Tee shots that will now be a little wider are holes 4 and 6.  The tree service will be here for a few more days to begin pruning more of the trees on the course.  It has now been about ten years since the trees have had a good pruning, and many trees are definitely needing it.  We hope to get a majority of the trees trimmed over the course of the next few years. 

The other "problem" with no snow cover

It's going to be a mess out there this spring.

January 12, 2012

Golf course finally looking like its supposed to in January....white!

Interesting Look to #1 Fwy

I don't know for sure what the cause of this is, but there are distinct lines of different looking turf on both sides of the first fairway.  It's possible that at some time, the sides of the fairway were killed off and seeded with a different variety of bentgrass, but there is also defined lines of earthworm activity.  The earthworm activity leads me to believe that there is some difference in the soil on the outsides of the fairway. 

The black specks in the grass on the left side of the picture are soil castings, created by earthworms.

Is it March?

This morning I took advantage of this unseasonable weather, and took a walk on the course to check on all the greens and evaluate how they are fairing through this very mild winter.  Overall things look good, but there are a few small spots that are looking a little weak and will need to be monitored through the rest of this snowless "winter" we are having.  Snow cover provides protection to the greens from the winter winds and cold temperatures, without snow cover, some of the weaker areas of turf can be susceptible to winter kill. 

Dead Ash Tree Near 3 Tee

Without having many cold days, it's been hard to get out on the course and do our tree removals that we have planned for the winter.  It's best to do this work when the ground is frozen in order to minimize the damage to the turf from falling trees and the heavy equipment we need to use to clean up the mess.  The cold weather we had at the beginning of this week finally provided us a window of a few days to get out and work.  Most of the tree removals that we will be doing this winter are due to the emerald ash borer (EAB) that has infected most, if not all, of the ash trees on the course that are not being treated. 

Click on the Picture to Enlarge and see the EAB galleries that cut of water and nutrient supplies, killing the ash trees.

Since we haven't been able to get out on the course as often as we like, it's been busy here in the shop.  About half of the equipment work has been completed, but there is still a long way to go to get ready for mowing and opening the course in the spring.  It will be here before we know it!