First Covering Takes Place This Week

Covering Greens - Farm Course Closed Tuesday at 11:30 and Reopens Thursday at 11:00

Our first few days of weather that will be cold enough to force covering the greens isn't going to wait for December to roll around.  Temperatures are expected to drop below 25 degrees Tuesday night (11/27) and Wednesday's highs will hover around the mid-forties.  Winds will be out of the north and are expected to be in the 10-20 mph range on Wednesday.  The Wind Chill temperature Wednesday morning is currently forecasted to be a chilly 16 degrees.

With that said, we will be closing the Farm course on Tuesday at 11:30 to allow enough time to cover the greens before dark.  Placing the covers out for the first time requires a few more hours than normal in order to position the covers properly.  Once the staff figures out the exact angles to place the corners the covers are then stapled to the ground and the corners are painted to speed up their next installation for the next time.  The covers will remain on the greens until Thursday when we hope to get the course reopened for play by around 11:00.

Leaf Season

The leaf season is in peak mode with leaves steadily rolling off the trees over the past few weeks.  The persistent rains as of late has kept the courses too wet to take our large equipment out on a steady basis and as such we have definitely struggled to keep pace.  The initial leaf fall period was later than normal this season but with the recent hard frost, rains and wind they are well on their way to catching up.  The leaf season consumes the vast majority of our labor during this time of the year but rest assured by the end of December or early January we will have a hold on the leaf situation.  Until then be sure to establish a winter leaf rule in your group to keep up the pace of play and keep things friendly in your group.

Remnants Of Yet Another Hurricane With Member Guest A Few Days Away

Devastation was brought upon many with the two recent hurricanes and while the damage to our community and GCC's two courses was measurable it was nothing compared to those in the landing zones of each of these gigantic storms.  Just to keep things in proper perspective our minor flooding and tree damage pales in comparison to the  extensive property damage and the great many lives lost in these two storms and my heart goes out to everyone affected is these hardest of hit areas.

Mexico beach, Fl.

While we made it through the downgraded tropical depression associated with Hurricane Florence with nothing more than some significant flooding and a lot of tree debris the damage from the tropical depression associated with Hurricane Michael was not so kind.  The Irving Park course lost only one major tree on hole #14 but the Farm course witnessed a dozen trees uprooting from the high winds and saturated soils.  The bunkers on each course washed with the Irving Park bunkers suffering extensive washouts and all the sand contamination that comes with severe washing.  Debris on the two courses is extensive and will take several days, if not weeks, to get a hold on, especially at the Farm with the numerous large fallen trees.

As this storm hit on a Thursday, October 11 it did not give the staff a lot of time to make repairs before last weekend.  Now our Men's Member-Guest is just a day way and while we expect good conditions for this event a lot of our manpower that would have normally gone into tournament conditioning efforts has been reallocated towards storm cleanup.  The good news is this event is held during a time of the year where the cooler temperatures have slowed down the growth rate of the grass, so that frees up a lot of manpower to focus on things such as storm cleanup and course conditioning

The months of September and October have been as hot and wet as any I can remember.  The hot, moist and cloudy conditions have affected turf growth on each property but the Irving Park greens suffered the most.  The fall months are generally a time of recovery for cool season grasses but this year not so much.  While the Irving Park greens are in fair shape they are nowhere near where we would like for them to be for this time of the year.  We expect with a few weeks of cooler temperatures we will begin to finally see new root growth and surface healing of the plants.  This should result in a gradual firming of the surface and provide us the opportunity to once again producing green speeds more suitable for this time of the year.

Best wishes to all the teams who are entered into this year's Gentleman's Member-Guest and let's all hope the weather is a little more cooperative over these next few days.  2018 has been a crazy and very long year and your golf course maintenance team appreciates your patience and understanding as we have done our best to work through some very challenging situations brought unto us by the effects of good ole Mother Nature.

Farm Course Re-opens to Newly Restored Greens and Really Wet Conditions - Saturday, July 28

The long awaited re-opening on the Farm course is just a few days away and it can't come soon enough for all parties involved.  The Irving Park course and its staff have done their best to handle the additional play this summer with more than its share of repairs going on throughout a lot of very busy play days.  The practice putting green with its small amount of cup-able surface has suffered the most with all the play and teaching clinics, which has simply worn the surface down to the dirt in a few areas.  Mid-June through Mid-July was very hot this year with 22 days out of 30 in the nineties and 10 days near or above 95.  Water management and more specifically hand watering greens has been especially difficult this year with the temperatures, the high volume of play and all the extra repair work going on outside of the greens. So while the Irving Park staff loves seeing golfers, the expected normalization of rounds on the course will prove helpful to conditions of the course moving forward.

The Farm staff has been busier than almost any of the members could even begin to comprehend.  Since the course has closed much has taken place.  The greens were re-planted and the grow-in has gone well.  The same hot weather that has worked against the Bentgrass greens at Irving Park has resulted in a very good grow-in on the new Ultradwarf Bermuda.  Over three acres of sod has been installed on various areas throughout the course with a lot of the areas now having grown in enough that they will be somewhat hard to see.  Three new forward tees have been constructed and several small but much needed drainage projects have been completed.  Nearly 20 very large trees have been removed and with the exception of the last few trees that were removed just last week, all these areas have been repaired as well.

The opening week has not gotten off to a great start with nearly five inches of rain coming over the past 5 days.  Sunday night's storm brought a lot of high winds with it creating a lot of cleanup work for the staff but it's nothing they can't overcome by the weekend.

In the end, the Farm course staff is excited to see golfers once again and the Irving Park staff is excited to see play slow down just a little bit.  I'm sure all the golfers are eager to once again get to play the Farm course after 10 long weeks of it being closed.  With that said, everyone has worked really hard up to this point and while I know everyone will be happy to see this day come and go, no one on our staff expects the workload to let up anytime soon.  We still have nearly two months of summer ahead of us and all our extra seasonal labor will be heading back to school over the next few weeks leaving us with just our core group of fulltime guys who will working hard to keep pace during a time when everything is still very much actively growing.

We hope everyone can get out to the Farm course very soon, if not this weekend, and we hope everyone is pleased with all our efforts.

Hole #12

New Flowers

Hole #3

Hole #11

Hole #4

#3 Green

Course Update - June 18, 2018

IRVING PARK

The Irving Park greens were aerified on June 4-5 and are now two weeks into recovery with a full recovery usually taking three weeks.  This week we are experiencing our first sustained heat wave with several days in the mid to upper nineties and with that comes stress on the delicate cool season Bentgrass.  With this type of heat related stress comes the need to begin our summer hand watering program to maintain the proper amount of moisture on the greens and to cool down the surface during the hottest portion of the day.

Hand Watering - Cooling - Misting - Syringing
It is called a lot of things but the practice of applying a light amount of water during the afternoon hours is crucial to maintaining the overall health of a Bentgrass green mowed at .110 throughout the summer months in the South.  When temperatures are high, even a moist green will need to be lightly watered.  When soil temperatures becomes extremely high the roots on Bentgrass will become incapable of replacing the amount of water lost to evaporation (the combined losses of evaporation and plant transpiration).  Thus, water is lightly applied to the entire green in an effort to cool the plant and/or replace excess water loss. Temperature readings this week showed the canopy as high as 108 degrees prior to a light misting of the green and quickly down to 96 degrees (matching air temperatures) after being hand watered. With the Farm course closed and it being Father's Day weekend the course was especially busy this past Sunday.  As such we had 4 guy's on duty to keep the greens from wilting too much because it is especially difficult to cool greens with a course completely full of golfers. 

Taylor Wilkerson Misting #7 - Air Temp 96 degrees

From the staff's perspective we clearly understand that the practice of hand watering is necessary but we also know it can be a very disruptive process to golfers due to where the majority of it takes place, on the greens.  While our staff is trained to avoid golfers whenever possible there are always days when keeping a low profile becomes nearly impossible. This past weekend was a good example of just such an occurrence with very high temperatures and almost two groups on every hole left little opportunity for the staff not to interrupt play.  During a worst-case scenario where the greens are actively wilting and play is heavy the staff may find the need to motion to approaching golfers or remove the flagstick and temporarily suspend play to allow them to catch up with the plants requirements for water.  Whether it is one of these busy and stressful days (for both the greens and the staff) or maybe just a routine afternoon of cooling greens we do ask for your patience and understanding.  Please remember the staff’s main objective is to keep the greens in the best possible playing condition so that your long term golfing experience will be more enjoyable.   

Winterkill Repairs     
The staff at both courses continue to work on repairing damaged areas on the two courses and will be installing 2.5 truckloads of new sod this week on each course.  After this week each course will have approximately 3-4 truckloads of sod left to repair and we continue to plan on being completed with the vast majority of this work by our original mid-July timeline.  On the Irving Park course we will be focused on making repairs to the #7 fairway this week, which was the worst or largest affected area on the course.

First of two truckloads on #7

FARM COURSE

Greens
The farm greens are now on day 25 and everything is going along as scheduled.  We are mowing the greens 5-6 times a week and will be applying our first moderate topdressing application to the greens on Friday.  Next week we expect to begin vertically mowing the greens and continue taking the mowing height down.  The very hot weather that is creating stress on the Irving Park greens is creating ideal growing conditions for the Farm greens.  With sprigging always comes small little areas on the greens that simply take time to fill in and the current weather pattern will prove to be very helpful to hopefully speeding up this process. Our original goal was to reopen the course on July 28 but if we continue to experience normal to above normal temperatures we do not think it would not be unreasonable to get the course opened before that time frame.

Areas Filling In - Day 25

#15 - 6-18-18

Winterkill Repairs  
Just like the Irving Park course the staff at the Farm will be installing 2.5 truckloads of sod this week , which will leave them with another 3-4 to go.  Two of those truckloads will need to be used on the Farm range tee.  When we do finally get around to working on the practice teeing area we will be encouraging members to use the rear Zoysia tee at the end of the range, which we have noticed many members having been taking advantage of this year.

#6 Tee hillside ready for new sod

#6 Hillside Sodded

Drainage Work and New Forward Tees
While the greens and other winterkill related repairs have keep the staff busy they have also been making improvements to several areas of the course.  Drainage was a small part of the issue where some of the Zoysiagrass died and in those areas the staff has been working to install new drainage before sodding the area back with new grass.
Also, a few areas on the course died where we were going to eventually add some of the new forward tees that we committed to a few years ago.  In these areas it did not make sense to lay new sod and then come back at a later time and build a new tee.  So new tees are being constructed on holes #1, #2, #4 and #13.

New Drainage on #2

New Forward Tee #2 - Early Construction

New Forward Tee #1 - Early Construction

Course Update - May 28, 2018

Irving Park Greens Aerification

The Irving Park course  will be aerified on Monday, June 4 and Tuesday, June 5.  With the Farm course closed this will be extra burdensome on the members but the aerifcation of the greens prior to the onset of the hot and humid summer season is critical to the survivability of the Bentgrass.   Through aerification we; 1) extract excessive accumulation of organic material; 2) improve soil gas exchange; 3) stimulate new root development; 4) stimulate microbial activity; and 5) improve the plants ability to withstand biotic and abiotic stresses.




Ultradwarf Sprigs
The Farm course officially closed on Sunday, May 20th to begin preparing the greens for the planting of the new G12 Ultradwarf sprigs.  The first step was to spray a growth regulator on the parts of the greens where there was live grass growing in an effort to slow the growth of these areas over the next several weeks.  The greens were then vertically mowed and scalped to remove as much of the surface material as possible.  Behind the verticutting and scalping came the aerifiers.  The greens were aerified three times over with 3/8 inch coring tines.  The plugs were allowed to dry out and were then dragged and blown off.  The final step was to heavily topdress the greens and roll them.

A Green Verticut, Scalped and Aerified

A Green Topdressed and Ready for Planting

The preparation of the greens was completed on Wednesday 5/23 and the new sprigs arrived around midnight in a refrigerator truck.  The truck's temperature was set at 35 degrees inside the trailer to prevent the sprigs heating up and decaying throughout their long trip from Texas.  The sprigs were planted on 13 greens on Thursday 5/24 and the remaining 8 greens were planted on Friday 5/25.  Once the sprigs were spread across the green they were rolled and heavily watered.  For the next 10 days the sprigs will be watered constantly throughout the daylight hours.

Laying out the Bags

A Closeup of Newly Planted Sprigs

#11 Green 5/27

In the early stages of sprigging a green the new plants are very vulnerable to two things.  The first is drying out.  To keep the plants alive until they begin to form a new root system you basically have to keep them wet 24/7.  Throughout the first two weeks the greens will receive nearly 4 inches of water every day.  Once the stolons begin to establish new roots the watering levels will be slowly backed down until around day 28 when we will go back to night watering.

The second and most concerning vulnerability in the early stages of planting is a large scale downpour, that if it were to occur, would wash all the sprigs from the low areas to drainage areas off the greens.  If this were to happen the crew would have to go out as soon as possible and attempt to rake the sprigs up and respreads them across the green.  In certain cases we would ask Champion to send additional sprigs to replant these areas and start the watering cycle all over again.  This high risk period last from the day of planting for approximately 10 days.  So we may need a little luck as we have Subtropical Storm Alberto creating flood warnings across our area throughout the early part of this week.

Once the greens begin rooting we will begin the second phase of the program, which includes mowing, verticutting, aerifying, topdressing and fertilizing.  This phase usually occurs right around the 2.5-3 week mark and will continue until the course is ready for play in what we estimate will be 7-9 weeks (mid to late July).

SOD UPDATE

The Irving Park course has been working on sod repairs steadily over the past several weeks. To date they have installed nearly 30,000 sf of new turf with another truckload scheduled for delivery this Thursday.  The early priorities were placed on areas around the greens and on the tees.  Once these areas are complete the staff will begin to move to fairways.  The Zoysia fairway on 14 is the slowest to establish and therefore will be done first.  The largest amount of damage is on the #7 fairway and it will be done last to allow for as much natural recovery as possible.  Once the fairways are complete we will begin to move to the final areas of damage mostly in the rough scattered throughout the course.

Prepping for Sod

A weeks worth of Dead Sod removed from the Course

 The Farm course had to detour from sod repairs over the last two weeks in an effort to prepare for and plant the greens.  With the greens now planted the staff has already reinitiated its work of repairing the numerous winterkilled areas.  We hope to have the vast majority of these repairs on the Farm course completed by the time the course is reopened.

Golf Course Update on Winterkill and Pond Dredging Project #13 Irving Park Course

Greensboro Country Club President, Thomas Watkins, recently sent out an email to the membership briefly outlining the scale of the damage that has been inflicted on the two courses from this past winter's cold spell.  While most people now recognize how cold this past January was the months of March and April were also well below average in temperatures.  While we knew early on we had a fair amount of damage on the tees, fairways and roughs, we struggled to quantity just how much until we received a week or more of warm seasonal temperatures that seemingly took forever to get here.  In a typical year the two courses are fully green from tree line to tree line by the end of April.  This year we estimate that we are approximately two -three growing weeks behind a normal year.  While we spent a lot of time probing areas to try and determine just what we would be facing it is an almost impossible task to accurately forecast these damaged areas until Mother Nature takes her course and clearly defines them for you.

Early Stages of Winterkill Definition IP #7 2018

Winterkill #7 Fairway 2015

Now that these areas have somewhat defined themselves we know we have about 5 acres of damaged turf between the two courses that will need to be repaired.  To repair these areas the staff will be asked to use a sod cutter to cut off the top layer of dead turf.  Then they will need to hand shovel the dead material into a utility vehicle and prepare the surface for new sod.  Once approximately 10,000 square feet of turf area has been prepared the crew will work to install the sod, begin the new establishment phase and move onto the next 10,000 sf plot.  While this sounds simple enough it is a very laborious process that will take time to accomplish.  We expect to average 1 truckload a week for the next 12 weeks, therefore we hope to have this work behind us by the latter part of July.  We will try to focus on the most important playing areas up front and work our way to the lesser important areas last.  Throughout this same time period we will be actively fertilizing and aerifying the damaged areas to promote as much recovery along the edges as possible.  With warm weather during the month of June we expect to see a measurable percentage of these areas shrink in size on their own.  With that taken into consideration, we hope to have a very presentable course by the latter part of June.

Removing the Winterkilled Turf

While we now recognize just how cold this past winter was it is best represented by looking at how much damage we had to our Zoysiagrass on the Farm course this year.  Zoysia is significantly more cold tolerant than Bermudagrass, but its cold tolerance was fully tested this year with several areas failing the test.  We are currently estimating we lost 22,000 sf of Zoysia this year in comparison to the brutal winterkill year of 2015 where we lost ~ 2,000 sf.

Zoysia Damage Farm Course #7

Pond Dredging Project Irving Park Hole #13

We recently drained the pond on the Irving Park course in an effort to remove the small island that had formed over the past many years from upstream sediment and debris buildup.  The pond has become an aesthetic eyesore with the noticeable island of debris and the overall shallow nature of the pond that makes it very difficult to maintain any semblance of an acceptable level of water quality.  We had hoped to use some small turf friendly excavation equipment in an effort to get the debris well below the surface in an effort to return a full surface of water back across the pond.  This was meant to be a temporary fix until the club could work a full scale pond reclamation project into its long term capital planning.  Once the pond was fully drained and the extent of buildup could be more clearly seen it quickly became apparent that in order to accomplish the original task of limited debris removal it would require much larger equipment and would therefore need to be rescheduled.  We are currently working on revising our estimates for this project and will be submitting the new proposal for Board reconsideration.  In the meantime the pond will be allowed to refill and due to the shallow nature of the pond and its small size we predict the moderate rains forecasted for this weekend will quickly refill the pond.  If not we will refill manually with wells located in close proximity to the pond. We currently hope we can restart working on and finish this project by early summer.

#13 Pond in a Drained State

Bermudagrass Spring Transition

Each spring the warm season grasses transition from a dormant state of growth to a new period of awakening. As with almost any plant growth cycle weather is clearly a significant factor in the overall outcome that relates to plant growth and health. As most are well aware, the winter brought in a very cold spell in late December and early January where the plant is just now expressing the effects of those cold temperatures.  While we are still in the month of February, recent warmer than normal temperatures are causing the warm season grasses to try and break dormancy.

Farm Ultradwarf Greens - Why Do They Look So Odd?

Most noticeably breaking dormancy are the new Ultradrawf putting surfaces at the Farm.  The tightly mown surfaces and the sand based growing medium create a warmer than normal soil profile.  The remaining areas of the course (tees, fairways and roughs) that are in large part grown on heavier soils and have much thicker canopies are slightly slower to warm up and break dormancy.
Adding to variations currently expressing themselves on the Farm greens are the effects of our winter covering program that served to protect the greens from the dangerously low temperatures over the past few months.  Growth is now occurring in several different areas.  The most noticeable areas are where the dual covers overlapped resulting in a form of double insulation.  Winding streaks throughout many of the greens are also very noticeable.  This is the result of wrinkles in the cover that provided an extra layer of air, which in effect offered an increased layer of protection.  The final areas that are noticeably different are areas where pine straw and tennis balls were used to ensure an added layer of air and increased level of protection.  All three of  the conditions listed above have resulted in these areas breaking dormancy quicker than other areas of the green.  These areas are now actively growing while the remaining and majority of the green is still in a state of dormancy.  While we still believe we are in good shape with the overall health of the greens as it relates to potential winter damage the uneven rate at which certain areas of the green are breaking dormancy has and will continue to result in an odd look to the putting surface.  We expect as this continues it will also have a negative effect on ball roll as the areas actively growing will affect ball roll more than the dormant surfaces.  Everyone who has managed Ultradwarf greens in our area always speaks of the spring transition period being the most difficult time of year to provide consistent playing surfaces and this year may prove to be slightly more difficult than normal.

Partial Dew Resulting from Actively Growing Areas

Closeup of Actively Growing Area

Closeup of Dormant Area

White Healthy Stolen from Dormant Area

All Other Areas of Bermuda

Those same cold temperatures that are now expressing themselves on the Farm greens will certainly begin to show themselves throughout other parts of the course as the soil temperatures begin to gradually rise.  Not unlike any other year where a significant cold snap invaded the area, we do expect to see some signs of damage in the areas most prone to winter damage.  On the Farm course the Zoysia is more cold tolerant, so we don't expect to see anything beyond the normal wear and tear in these areas.  But as the rough is Bermuda there will be certain areas that may show signs of damage.  Areas where shade has weakened the turf or north facing slopes resulted in colder soil for a longer duration may be prone to thinning or death.  Our largest risk comes at the Irving Park course where we have numerous areas that are shady or poorly drained.  While we don't expect the level of damage we experienced with the late freeze of 2015 we are planning for more turf repairs than we would have to deal with in a normal year.