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.

Covering Ultrdwarf Greens

Date: Friday, November 10, 2017

The weather up until this point has been very mild for this time of year.  The average first frost for our region is typically October 15.  So far we have only had one or two nights that have been cold enough to produce very small pockets of frost in a few of our low lying areas.  Tonight will be different as the temperatures are expected to drop to a low of 25 degrees by sunrise tomorrow and as such we are are expecting a fairly significant frost or freeze.  They are calling for winds to continue throughout the night and if so that may reduce the amount of frost we would normally see with this type of temperature.

Covering Ultradwarf Greens

The decision to cover or not cover and when to uncover takes into account a lot of different variables but the one factor that is most important is the temperature.  The USGA, based on field observations and University research, has shown that the low-temperature threshold to strongly considering covering Ultradwarfs is 25 degrees Fahrenheit.   There are a lot of other factors that come into play such as duration of the low temperature, soil moisture, wind speed, revenue, soil temperatures, high temperatures on the following day(s), etc. all can play a part in when we decide to cover the greens.

 

The simple rule of thumb as for when to uncover a green is if the following day temperature does not exceed 50 degrees and the following night's temperature once again drops below 25 degrees.  When this scenario occurs the covers might remain on the greens and the course will, therefore, remain closed for the day.

Based on temperatures currently forecasted for tonight we will be shutting down the front nine of the Farm course around 1:30 today to cover the last two greens that were planted (the two chipping greens) along with #5 and #8.  Our number five green was also planted late and the #8 green is our shadiest green on the course, which results in cooler soil temperatures than the remaining greens.  As Saturday night's low is currently 28 degrees and the high on Saturday is 45 degrees we will uncover these greens Saturday morning and not recover Saturday evening.  Part of the covering and uncovering strategy is to allow the plant to go dormant and retain some of its cold hardy tolerance, so it is not always bad to allow some cold temperatures to come into play.

As this is our first time covering greens this unique set of weather conditions will provide a good training exercise for when we eventually have to cover all the greens.  Tomorrow is our first 10:00 shotgun start on the Farm course this winter and based on the risk of frost, time spent with covers and with plenty of leaves on the course we are expecting a slight delay to the planned 10:00 start.

Doug Lowe, CGCS

July 24 Update

The course was officially closed on May 23 to begin all the work associated with converting the Farm greens to the new Champion G12 Ultradwarf Bermuda.  Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 10th week (9th-week post planting sprigs) and a lot of progress has been made since we embarked on this project.

#5 Green Complex
A lot has been said in previous posts as to what was involved in the reconstruction of this green complex and why this work was needed to make this green more playable with the new Ultradwarf surface.  The green was planted on June 27 and is now four weeks old.  The gravel layer of the two new bunkers have now been treated with the Better Billy Bunker polymer and filled with new sand.  The green was aerifed last week and a moderate layer of topdressing sand was applied.  When the course opens on August 18 this green will be just a little over 7 weeks old and as such, this green will be visibly behind the remaining greens that were planted some 25 days earlier.

#5 7-21-17

Short Game Area
Once the construction efforts concluded on #5 our contractor quickly turned his efforts into making the various new improvements to our short game chipping and practice putting area.  The newly improved area was effectively enlarged by removing the large concrete cart path that once bisected the area between the putting green and the chipping green.  A new chipping green was constructed on the area closest to the clubhouse and the chipping area around that green was expanded slightly towards #2 green.  The new green was designed to simulate the #7 green on the Farm course.  Two new practice bunkers were created in front of the old chipping green and the three previous bunkers were all filled in.  The area around the new green and the old green was sodded with Zeon Zoysia and the few remaining areas in the corners were sodded with 419 Bermuda.  A small area of overflow parking was created near the old chipping green and #1 tee.  The two chipping greens were sprigged on July 13 and will only be 4.5 weeks old on August 18 and will therefore not be open for practice until sometime in early September.  However, the putting green was one of the original greens to be planted and it will be open for practice putting and limited chipping on schedule.

The New Chipping Green with Mix Installed

Brooks Turner examining the new Better Billy Bunker Polymer

New Overflow Parking

Chipping Greens 1 Week After Planting

#14 Bunker Reconstruction
After the short game area improvements were finished the contractor set his sights on making improvements to the bunker and surrounding green slopes on #14.  The purpose of this change was to allow golfers a better opportunity of shooting at the back or right side pins on this green.  The old bunker had a lot of severe sloping that added to the kick effect of balls landing short of the green.  To achieve this goal the bunker was lowered some 2.5 feet and the mounding between the new bunker and the green was all but eliminated.  While lowering the bunker the contractor ran into a significant amount of bedrock that had to be chipped away, which resulted in another three days work of unplanned work.  The end result is a bunker that most will not even know was completely rebuilt but one that will play much fairer for all those shots that land just short of the green.

Rock Removal

#14 New Softer Bunker

#14

Collar Sod - Latitude 36
As we worked through this whole process a lot of people on their way to the range would ask why the collars looked so bad.  The old collars were sprayed out at the same time the greens were sprayed but were left unplanted until the very end.  This was in an effort to limit any contamination of the sodded areas into the sprigged areas as the sod would have greatly out competed the sprigs throughout that first 6-8 weeks.  The collars were the last thing the contractor worked on and the last collar was planted on Friday, July 21.  The new collars were planted with Latitude 36 Hybrid Bermuda that has a slightly darker green color than 419 and has shown to be slightly more cold tolerant than 419.  The new collars will take another 4-6 weeks to get the height lowered and the surfaced smoothed down to a suitable collar quality.

Removing the old collar

Latitude 36 grown beside 419 under the same conditions

Collar removed and ready for planting

Low Areas on the Original Set of Greens Planted on June 1, 2017
With everything that has taken place throughout this project, our only real hurdle has been to overcome the weather.  The heavy rains early in project totaled close to 20 inches before the tap shut off.  We were fortunate that the rains had little washing effect each time we went out with the new sprigs.  But the heavy rains along with all the additional irrigation required to grow in the sprigs did apparently create some difficult grow in conditions in the low areas on the greens.  These areas have been slower to grow in than the higher areas of the greens throughout these first few weeks of July but we are now seeing some notable growth in these areas and expect them to catch up with the remaining healthy portions of the greens by sometime in early August.

Watering the new Latitude 36 sod along side of one of our thin low areas

Going Forward
The next several weeks will be spent trying to establish all the new sod and get the newly sprigged greens turned into something that more closely resembles the high - quality putting surface the Members will expect on opening day.  The current mowing height on the greens is set at .130 and if all goes well it will be lowered to .120 this weekend or early next week.  Next week we plan to conduct our first vertical mowing followed by a topdressing sand that is finer than the one used during the early stages of grow in.  Each week after that will see the same process repeated at slightly lower mowing heights and slightly finer sands until we reach the opening day where we expect the greens should be smooth, uniform and stimping around 10.5 feet.  From there we do expect the greens to get slightly better in the month of September as they continue to grow-in and we continue to focus on the final conditioning of the new surfaces.

Week 6

The first week of July marks the start of week 6 and we continue to make steady progress.  The green on #5 was sodded on the last day of week 3 and throughout week 4 we focused on getting the Bentgrass sod to root down and stabilize.  Once the sod had established itself we applied an application of Roundup herbicide and waited 7 days to begin aerifying and verticutting in an effort to prep the surface for the new sprigs.  The new sprigs were planted on the afternoon of June 27 and will take approximately 10-12 days to begin setting new roots.  On day 16 (July 13) we hope to begin mowing the new surface.  Our nursery that sits to the left of the #16 teeing area was also prepped and planted at the same time.

Spraying the newly established Bent sod

Aerifying the recently sprayed out Bent sod

June 27 watering of newly planted sprigs on #5

Short Game Area 

The same week that #5 was planted was when we began making the new improvements to the short game practice area.  There was and still is a lot to do in this area.  As of today (July 2) we have constructed the new green and roughed in the two new bunkers in front of the old chipping green. We have also rough shaped in the entire chipping area between the two greens and installed the new irrigation for this area as well as an extensive amount of new drainage.

Earthwork Day 1 Short Game Area

Day 1 Storm

Subsurface Drainage in new chipping green

Gravel layer in new CG

New mix installed in new CG

New bunkers getting roughed in

Moving Forward

Our goal is to have the short game area finished and completely planted by Sunday, July 9.  At which time we will move our construction efforts towards re-shaping the bunker on hole #14.  We will not be making any changes to the putting surface on #14, rather we will be lowering the right greenside bunker and eliminating the large mounding that currently exists between this bunker and the green. The end goal is to be able to see more of the green from the tee and eliminate any bad bounces from balls that land just short of the green.

Once we are finished with our work on #14 we will begin installing the collar around the greens on the course.  The collars will be sodded with Latitude 36, which is a hybrid Bermuda that is very similar in looks to the standard 419 hybrid, but has shown a higher degree of cold hardiness.  We hope to be finished with the collar installation by the fourth week of July.  This will be about the same time we expect to have 100% coverage on the greens that were planted on 6/1 and 6/2.  The first few weeks in August will be spent fine tuning the surface of the new greens in an effort to get them ready for our August 19 opening date.