Aeration Schedule and Golf Course update

We will be completing our fall aeration August 8th and 9th. The golf course will be fully closed both days with the goal of opening at noon on Wednesday. We will follow that by aerating tees, fairways and approaches August 30-September 1 and Sept 6- 8, The golf course will remain open while we aerate tees, apps, and fairways.

We did a test run of our aeration process on the putting green this past Thursday to lock down our process and I'm glad we did. Our first 2 aeration plans using the deep coring tines had to be scrapped due to supply issues. We tested plan C, using our tractor aerator and an alternative coring tine. That process had to be scrapped due to mechanical failures on the aerator tearing up the green. There's two section about 12" by 8' on the #1 side of the green that got damaged. We hoped to use the tractor because it is an 8' wide aerator and we could punch all the greens in 5-6 hours. Instead we are using our walk aerator, which has a 4' wide path, and will take 8-9 hours to punch all 18 greens. This is why we like to test our process prior to day of, thankfully it was just a small section of the putting green and not one of the main greens.

We were also testing our cleanup and finish process, after the putting green we are now down to E on the list but have a very solid game plan to make things go smoothly. following aeration and cleanup we will be verticuting the greens to a 1/4" depth. This will provide added seed bed for the bentgrass we will put down as well as remove a lot of the grain that inhibits our greens speed. The putting green recovery will be a good marker for how the rest of the greens will recover and what to expect following aeration.

As for the rest of the course, its hanging in there. Last Sundays heat spike caused some stress to greens 9, 14, and 16, I expect them to make a full recovery with aeration. The fairways, tees, and apps have handled the weather quite will. The rough is showing signs of drought stress in non irrigated areas and the collars are, well, the collars. They took a beating when the pumps were down but then began to recover with the rain we had a few days later, the recovery was superficial as the roots had already been stressed and couldn't take the next heat wave. We're looking into making irrigation adjustments to help combat this issue so it doesn't happen again. I fully expect them to be in prime condition for member guest this fall.

With that being said, our focus from this point on is prepping the golf course for member guest and providing the best conditions possible. Scratch that, I want to provide conditions that don't seem possible, my goal is to provide a golf course everyone is proud of. So, here's what to expect in the coming weeks. Greens, tees, fairways and rough will all be aerated and overseeded. We are going to begin making herbicide applications to the fairways, roughs, collars and tees. We did the fairways and tees this week which might cause a "bleaching" affect. We are going to spray a herbicide in the green surrounds and fairway surrounds to kill the bentgrass in those areas as well ding up the bermuda that we have. Over the next month there might be some "less than perfect" playing conditions in certain areas as we get read to overseed but by mid September the golf course should be in prime condition.

There's a busy couple of weeks ahead of us as we get all our projects done and we appreciate your support and patience as we work through these items.