October 1, 2020 Update

As we head into the fall of 2020, I would like to take the time to recap the 2020 season and update everyone on our Common Bermuda eradication trials, 12 green, fairway and rough inter-seeding, and the Red #1 tee.

The beginning of the year began with only receiving 60% of our average rainfall during the winter season. Normally, we have around 28 inches. This past season we only received 17.7 inches with the majority of that in December and January. Since we are in an arid region of the country during the summer months, it is more important how far into the spring we receive rainfall, other than how much, so the lack of rain late in the spring season, aging irrigation infrastructure, water quality and staff reduction due to the pandemic created a perfect storm for the dry conditions we experienced this summer. Staffing is critical to supplement the inefficiencies of our aging infrastructure, so Scene 2 of 2020 was the staff reduction in March created by the Covid-19 pandemic economic crisis. From March 18th thru the beginning of May we only had myself and two other staff members that have formal training in golf course maintenance. We were fortunate to have Brian, Tony and some of his staff to help us out, but most of our time was spent on training and directing. This is a critical time to prepare the property for a successful season, so the staff reduction in trained personnel did not get us off to a good start in 2020.

The one positive of the staff reduction that evolved was the ability to bring in some new staff that we feel put us in a better position moving forward. Along with that we were allowed to increase our labor budget and staff size for the remainder of the year and into the future compared to prior seasons. 2020 has been a trying year, but we look forward to taking our positive gains and moving forward.

As of Friday we made our second and final trial application to eradicate the Common Bermuda on the driving range tee, middle of #2 fairway location and the beginning of #18 fairway.

As stated in a previous blog, we made a conscience decision to practice off the synthetic surface this season to provide the membership with the maximum number of stalls due to the social distancing protocols. Because of this we decided to treat the whole driving range tee this fall to eradicate the common Bermuda that returned after the leveling of the tee surface. Common Bermuda is a deeply rooted grass that is hard to eliminate in any circumstance. Monday, we will close the teeing area of the driving range to aerify and overseed the entire surface to recover from the herbicide applications and fill in the voids where the common Bermuda was eradicated. In a normal year we would of managed things differently at the driving range. It was advantageous for us to go this route and use the resources in other areas to get us through this difficult year. We appreciate your patience with this and look forward to providing the membership with a quality teeing surface when we open the grass portion.

Another issue everyone has noticed is the return of the Rapid Blight disease on our 12th green. Rapid Blight is a microscopic organism that thrives when soils or water have elevated salt levels. Symptoms are more severe when poor water quality or amount of irrigation to the turf results in an increase in salinity in the soil. The pathogen can thrive in the range between 50 degrees F and 93 degrees F maximum daytime air temperature. This organism colonizes the foliage, crowns, and roots in affected areas. The low rainfall totals in the spring and salt build up due to poor water quality have facilitated this problem again this year. After last year we enhanced (closer intervals) our flushing programs with regards to the greens. Since we had the same results with the 12th green this year, we will be locating and digging up the drainage system for this green to ensure it is performing properly and not compromised. While doing that, we will add a drain line to the front of this green that has been historically problematic.

After the club championship, we will continue to overseed the fairways in high traffic and thin areas to help summer recovery. We already started this process with the fairway aerification. We will also start rough aeration and seeding as time permits.

Another project we will perform after the Club Championship is the leveling and regrassing of the Ladies #1 tee. We intended to implement this in September after the Club Championship, but moved it to October when the tournament was postponed.

Another item that is on your calendar is the aeration of the greens. We will be closed October 13th and 14th to perform this procedure.

Yours in turf,

Stacy L. Wallace, Golf Course Superintendent