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.

Course closing

Due to the upcoming weather forecast, which is calling for winter like temperatures and conditions,  the golf course will be closed to play beginning on Monday, November 25.  This will allow us to complete our winter preparations before winter sets in to make sure that the course will be in great shape in the spring!

Right now we are in the process of doing our final clean up of leaves, finishing our preventative snow mold fungicide applications, and continuing to clean up the branches and downed trees from last weekend's storm.  Next week, after the course is closed,  the greens will be buried in a layer of sand to protect the turf from drying winter winds and to help maintain a smooth putting surface in the spring.

Fairway Aerification Day 1

Right now we are working on finishing up day 1.  Overall it went well, until the end of the day.  This morning it looked like we would easily complete the front nine and get at least two holes done on the back.  I guess we didn't knock on wood hard enough.  Currently, our aerifier, and the one that we borrowed from another course are broken down.  Unfortunately, this is usually part of the game of fairway aerification.  Considering the late breakdowns, we were still able to finish quite a bit.  The front nine, which includes four of the biggest five fairways, is finished, and part of number 10 is finished.  Tomorrow, the back nine will be closed until we are close to finishing it, at that time the tenth tee will open for play.  Contact the pro shop for updates.  Until then, here are some pictures from the day.

Pulling the plugs.

Grinding the dried plugs with flail mowers.

Dragging the ground plugs in.

Blowing off the remaining tufts of thatch and grass.

Mowing the fairway for the finished product.

The end of our day....

Irrigation is nice, but....

Irrigation systems are really only design to supplement rainfall, not replace it.  Over the past two months, our irrigation system has been required to replace rainfall which brings about a few issues.  The biggest issue that we are facing right now is that no matter how good an irrigation system is, there are going to be inconsistencies in water distribution.  Fortunately, it takes a pretty long stretch of dry weather for these to show up.  Unfortunately, we are seeing them right now.

In the morning before the dew on the fairways is burned off by the sun or mowed off, is when these dry areas really show themselves.  It's a little difficult to see in the picture, but if you click on it to enlarge it, you will see alternating dark and light areas.  The light areas are where the dew is heavier and the soil moisture is good, the dark areas are where the sprinklers don't put down a consistent amount of water and the soil is dry.

This picture shows the same thing just closer up.  

When we see dew patterns like these, we know that they are caused by irrigation because they are consistent.  There are other things that can cause dry areas though, they will show up with more inconsistent dew patterns.  They can be caused by soil conditions, or in our case, they are usually caused by tree roots.

Tree roots on the right side of #4 Fairway are out competing the turf for soil moisture.

The problem with inconsistent soil moisture is that it becomes difficult to manage playing conditions.  Theoretically we could use the sprinklers to water heavily and eliminate these dry spots, but then the areas that already have good soil moisture will become very soft and wet, not exactly the playing conditions you would expect during a long dry spell.  This week we will be doing our best to even out these dry spots by applying wetting agent to those areas and then handwatering them,  a very labor intensive process that we try to minimize on fairways.  We will also be temporarily trading out some full circle sprinklers with part circle sprinklers that only water the dry outside of the fairway.  Hopefully, we can get some of these dry areas evened out, maybe with a little help from mother nature.  

We have begun construction on a new yellow/forward tee on #14 so that it will no longer be a temporary tee on uneven ground.  This tee will be a great addition for any player who is not able to hit the ball as far as some others, or for if you are just looking to get a different perspective on this challenging hole.  The new tee is small enough that we have been able to build it with materials that were leftover from building the new blue tee on number six.  This new tee will require one additional sprinkler head to provide it with adequate irrigation coverage.  The plan is to have the tee completed by the end of next week, and open for play a few weeks after that.

It's hard to believe what I'm about to say, but it's time to start marking your calendars for our fall aerification schedule.  Fairway aerification will take place beginning on September 3rd, while the club is closed after labor day, and if weather and equipment cooperates, will be completed by Thursday, September 5th.  Greens aerification is scheduled for Monday, September 16th, and will probably carry over into the 17th.  Tees will be fit into the schedule whenever possible.  Please remember that during fairway and green aerification there may be nine holes closed to help expedite this critical process.  Thanks for your patience and understanding.

6 Blue Tee

Well, I guess time flies when you're having fun...or just really busy.  Time has slipped away from me, and once again it has been awhile since I've put a new post here.  Since the last post, pretty much the main story on the golf course has been the extraordinary amounts of rain we have been receiving.  Last week the course had gotten a chance to dry out a little bit, but since Sunday night we have gotten 2.5" of rain, with 2" of it coming in just about an hour, and the course is very wet again.  Low areas of the course have never really had a chance to dry out since the flooding rains in the middle of April and if we get any more rain this weekend like the forecast says, Sunday may be another "no carts" day.  Having to make that decision is never a fun one, so for once this year, maybe this batch of rain will miss us.

Even with the rain, we were still able to have a fairly productive week and we were able to finish a project that people have been waiting to see for a long time.  The new Blue Tee on #6 is now sodded and growing, but we still have some work to do in the area.  Areas around the tee that were damaged during construction will be seeded, and new irrigation for the tee will be added next week.  We hope to able to open the tee to play in just a few weeks.

Rough Grading and Alignment

Adding Sand/Soil Mix

Sodding the Tee

All Green!

 Hopefully, next week is a little drier and we will be able to catch up on our to-do list a little bit!  Lately it seems like all we have been doing is pushing sand back up on washed out bunker faces and trying to keep up with the mowing in between the heavy rains.

Helicopter Season

Well, it has begun, probably my least favorite time of the golf season.  The silver maple trees have started to drop their samaras, helicopters, or whirlybirds.  Whatever term you prefer to use, they are still a pain for us. They will be here for a few weeks, screwing up putts, making a mess of the golf course, and pulling staff away from mowing and other important jobs to blow the mess off the playing surfaces.  We will do our best to minimize their impact on play, but given the fact that over 30 percent of our tree population is silver maple trees, it will be an uphill battle.

Besides the silver maple helicopters, our course work continues.  Today we are core aerifying and heavily

topdressing the tees with sand.  We are also topdressing the greens for the second week in a row.  In the past we usually topdressed the greens every three weeks because of the old and inefficient machine that we had.  The old machine could not lay down an even layer of sand so after we topdressed, there was too much sand on the putting surface.  This sand on the top of the grass resulted in the greens mowers needing to be sharpened everytime we topdressed, sometimes twice, before the grass had grown through the sand.  Now with the new machine we are experimenting with laying down a very light and even layer of sand every week that won't destroy the mowers with every application.

We have also resumed work on the new blue tee for the sixth hole.  The base is set and leveled and we will be adding the construction mix and working on finished grades next.  We hope to have the tee sodded by the end of the week, but that may be a little ambitious.  After the tee is sodded it will take a few weeks for the sod to take root, and then it will be open for play!  It will be quite a challenge from back there, even for you big hitters.

Last week, the ash trees that were selected to be treated for the emerald ash borer, were treated with insecticide and fertilizer.  We are currently treating 12 trees, but there are two trees that are in decline despite the treatments.  They will be evaluated next year to see if it is worth it to continue treatments, or if the trees will need to be removed.  Overall, the treatments are working well, in the picture there are two ash trees next to each other on the 16th hole.  Can you tell which one is being treated and which isn't?