Golf Course Update

After an unseasonably cool start to the summer, it looks like the heat has arrived.  On Monday our temps exceeded 90 degrees for the first time this year.  Rather than easing into it, we ended up hitting 97 degrees for the daily high.  More of the same to follow the rest of the week.

With the cooler temps along with timely rains, our water usage has been drastically reduced compared to this time last year.  Still a long ways to go, but we are significantly under budget on water for the year.  Good news after the last two hot and dry years.

One topic that continues to come up is the difficulty of our rough this year.  The weather we have experienced has led to some of the healthiest rough we have seen over the last few years.  We have managed to keep our height of cut at 2.5" for the entire season.  The issue is more the turf being thick and healthy.  The impact of the heat over the next couple of weeks will have a natural thinning of the turf.  Please know it is not our intention to make the course more difficult, simply the impact of weather has created the tougher than normal conditions.

Another area of concern this season has been the transition from the Zoysia Approach to the Bentgrass collar.  This has historically been a challenging area due to the high traffic as well as the different needs of the turf.  We have sodded several of the areas and will continue to grow in the remaining thin areas.  One simple change we have made to our routine is the use of carpets for turning the mowers on.  The carpets alone are reducing the impact of mowers turning daily in this location.  We will continue to implement new strategies to alleviate this problem.

Finally, my apologies for the limited blog postings.  I find that I am using Twitter on a daily basis to give quick updates on course conditions.  I encourage you to take a look at it.  So far, it has been a great way to communicate information.