USGA Visit

Tuesday we had our Regional USGA Agronomist, John Daniels, visit the golf course for a day long visit.  It was very interesting to have a set of outside eyes looking in at the golf course, and maintenance operation.  Through all of this we will receive a detailed report on areas where we can improve our operation, and maybe where we should be looking for that next capital project idea.  His report should be available in the next few weeks.

The hydraulic leak on 7-9 greens is healing up nicely, by the end of the week most areas will be barely noticeable.  On another note we had a another leak on Tuesday, this was a different machine, the operator only made 4-5 passes on #10 green before he noticed something was wrong.  I am hoping we are done with oil leaks for the year.

The golf course is in great shape right now.  I hope you find time to enjoy the start of the Fall season. Good Luck to all Participants in the Dakota Open this weekend!!

Ross

August Update / USGA Visit

Well the last week has been an interesting one.  We have not received any big rains, but everyday there has been some moisture in the air.  In fact I have not run the irrigation for a week now, never thought that would happen after the drought we are in.  The heavy morning dew factors does make it difficult to get a quality cut on the turf grass, also that has caused the grass to grow in a crazy fashion.  So we have to slow down and make sure everything is getting cut properly.

It has been one week since we had the hydraulic leak.  Everything is looking well considering, on #8 green we actually have some burn from the detergent we used to clean up the oil.  This should recover in a timely fashion, along with the oil the streaks.  As shown below before and after pictures, everything is looking better.

Notice in the picture above, the not repaired ball mark is way worse than the oil leak.  Please repair ball marks.  

Tuesday, August 22, we are having a Turf Advisory Service visit from our USGA Agronomist.  It has been four years since we last had a TAS visit.  Typically there is some very useful maintenance information that will come out of this visit.  I always look forward to the USGA Visit and some of the useful information he reports back to us with.  We will typically get the report a week or two after the visit.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.

Thank You.

Ross

Hydraulic Leak!!

Yes on Thursday we had a hydraulic leak!  It happened on #7-#9 greens.  Thankfully it was not any worse than that.  Sometimes when these things happen the operator can not see the oil until it is on the grass blades for 5-10 minutes, that was the case this time.  At least another crew member saw something was wrong. 

So the process begun of trying to cleanup the oil, in this mower's case it is a bio oil.  The bio oil does help with long term cleanup, but does nothing for the initial heat burn of the grass plant.  The process involved using a detergent and lots of water, to disperse any oil that was there.  Through the process there was some damage to the thatch layer in the green, we will be hand top dressing these areas as needed to keep the greens putting smoothly.  I am hoping everything will heal up quickly with minimal damage.

This is the final result on Friday.

The big question is will we lose any of the grass?  That is unknown right now but will continue to monitor and adjust any maintenance practice as needed.  Every leak can be a little different so we will see what the results are from this one.


If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Good Luck to all Jack and Jill Participants This Weekend.

Ross

Irrigation / roots and more

The drought in the area continues, so far the irrigation and well system have been holding up to abnormal expectations.  One of the projects this week is fixing some coverage problems with our irrigation heads.  Most of the problem is with the small rear nozzle that will plug up and give inadequate coverage.  There is a newer style nozzle out that we have been replacing the old with, the new nozzle provides better coverage and a new design that does not plug up as easy.  As shown below the red nozzle is the new one, and the black is the old one.  The second photo below is of an area with inadequate coverage.  You can look to see these areas improving with the new and improved coverage.

The next project we are working on is the roots in the fairways.  Our famous hybrid cotton wood trees have a very shallow root system, and at times they grow near the surface or in our bunkers.  This creates many problems for both the golfer and maintenance staff.  The bunker crew will pull the roots on the bunkers as needed through out the year.  On the fairways we try to remove any exposed roots as time allows.  Some years we can not keep up, but hoping this year to get most of them removed.  We have started on #9 fairway, as shown below.

Greens have been handling to dry hot weather well.  There have been some times where the green speed has slowed compared to other days.  It has been rather weird dealing with humidity during a drought.  We are working on a few items and hope to have them at a good consistent pace going forward.  If you have any questions on this topic or any other please feel free to contact me.


Finally a big shout out to the bunker crew this morning.  Get job raking edges and weed eating.  They gave them a good fresh look!!  Thank you Gabe, Jacob and Lucas.

We will see you on the course!

Ross