Eventful

After hosting the three day, Missouri Women’s Amateur Championship  we were expecting to get caught up on mowing today.  Instead we had to get creative and change plans after a surprise storm blew in Wednesday evening.  This is one of the many challenges of golf course maintenance.  We have to always be ready to change gears and come up with back up plans based on events including golf and weather.

The most important move made was to do an emergency venting of greens.   A wet soil from storms and extreme temperatures could bake our greens.  The venting will help dry the surfaces and exchange gases aiding in less stress through the next few days!

Picture below is a plug from a putting green that shows increased rooting from previous venting holes!

Storm damage from the high winds left the course littered.  We spent most of the day cleaning up downed debris.

Green Up and Clean Up

We were forced to prioritize some tasks late in the week and over the weekend.  We apologize for the short comings.  First, our sod arrived much later in the day than usual on Thursday.  This forced us to work through Friday to complete the task.  Because of this we did not mow tees or collars and they were a little harry this weekend.

Areas prepped for sod on hole #5

Lastly, we had a huge limb down on Saturday morning we had to clean up.  The good news is no one got hurt and it also so happened to be limb I’ve heard multiple members complain about.  The clean up of this monster took 3 crew members 2 hours to clean on Saturday morning.  This caused us to get a late start on raking bunkers and wasn’t able to rake holes 1-5.

Monster limb down over #7 fairway

What a Mess!

After the hottest streak of weather yet this summer a break in temperatures was forecasted.  Even better, a chance of rain was predicted overnight Saturday.  Yeah... about that...  Mother Nature played a harsh trick on us when powerful winds destroyed the golf course Saturday night.  To add injury to insult we only received less than a quarter of an inch of some much needed rain.  Downed sections of trees knocked out the power to our irrigation pump station too!  Please be patient while we clean up all the debris and catch up on our typical maintenance and setup of the golf course.

Finally, on Monday we made a little mess of our own.  We aerated zoysia tees and cleaned off cores.  Some more blowing and detail work will continue through the week.

Plant protectant and fertilizer was applied to greens and we topdressed greens with sand as well.