President"s Cup 2016 - Heat Warning

July 19, 2016

Everyone, including the course maintenance team, looks forward to the arrival of the President's Cup each year.  The excitement on the side of the membership seems especially strong this year with the current waiting list sitting at four teams.  The maintenance team always looks forward to showcasing what they hope will be not only a beautiful course but one where the conditions are a step above what members normally see.  This is accomplished with a little bit of preplanning to get the course in peak condition but mainly this is the result of a lot of hard work and long hours from a group of employees dedicated to serving the membership.

Irving Park #1 Green 7-19-16

GREENS
While we are expecting really good course conditions this year it looks like Mother Nature will be bringing some really hot weather on the four days surrounding the tournament. Temperatures are being forecasted to hover in the mid-upper nineties and may reach 100 on Sunday. Even more important is that nighttime lows are not forecasted to drop below 70 for two weeks following the beginning of the heatwave on Friday.  With that being the case, our Bentgrass greens will be put to the ultimate test. Survival of the greens throughout this period will be our primary focus with extremely high temperatures along with a high volume of tournament play. This particular scenario will not only lead to a slower green speed and softer surface but our staff will likely be syringing greens in and amongst play.  While we attempt to minimize disruption to play from our cooling efforts we will be asking for the patience and understanding of the participants during both Saturday and Sunday's round.

As a proactive measure we needle-tine aerified the greens this week on Monday and Tuesday with 1/4 solid tines to increase the pore space heading into this event.  On Monday (7/25) we will once again be aerifying the greens on the Irving Park course with a slightly larger 3/8 solid tine.  We will then aerify the Farm greens on Tuesday (7/26) with the same sized tine.  Mowing heights will also go up slightly beginning next week from our current .110 height.  The Farm course will also be closed on Monday-Tuesday of next week for the second fairway aerification.  This is required because the Zoysiagrass is a much more aggressive thatch producer than Bermudagrass.  As we only have two days to accomplish this our spacing will be much wider than our first aerification and recovery time will be less than a week.  

So, everyone try your best to stay cool this weekend and to those playing in the President's Cup we hope you all play great and enjoy the two courses.

# 10 Farm