Dear Members,
We had some beautiful weather over the February period with temperatures consistently around the 25-30 degree mark and very little rain. The month did start off with a good drop which saw us receive 40mm over a three day stretch, since then however we have seen less than 1mm on the course over the past four weeks. After such a wet winter and spring, conditions have certainly taken a 180 tur and overall we’ve had just three days of over 2mm of rain in the past 9 weeks. This has put a fair amount of stress of many parts of the course and here’s hoping March can bring a little more rain to help freshen things up.
GREENS
We had a number of major events through February which included championships, two rounds of men’s pennant and the ladies bowl. With conditions getting drier as the month went on it became a balancing act between getting the greens as firm as fast as we could without putting too much stress on them. This is when water quantity becomes a pivotal part of our decision making as too much or too little can have a really negative impact on the greens health and playability. I feel we were able to do a really good job of getting that balance correct as the feedback we received, particularly from visitors to our club was extremely positive.
As we head into March its now a case of trying to nurse them through until greens coring on March 30th. This time of year the greens become particularly susceptible to disease due to a long dry summer and in our case the absence of cultural practices. Compared to previous years we haven’t been able to find the time needed to undertake vital practices such as dusting and verti draining so the greens are more than ever in need of a good coring to help alleviate the stresses caused by the many factors involved with golf course turf.
FAIRWAYS/TEES/SURROUNDS
You know things are getting dry when the santa ana begins to get stressed and we are starting to see signs of exactly that. The beauty of santa ana is that even when it becomes stressed it takes a lot more than that for it to die, so although its begun to lose its nice green colour its still producing a really nice surface to play from.
Our cool season areas are definitely starting to show signs of a long dry summer. The tees in particular due to their heavy compaction and rock hard clay soil is seeing some dead areas starting to appear. We are applying significant amounts of water to these areas on a nightly basis, but when soils are compacted as these tees are its very difficult for water to penetrate the surface. Its important to understand that most of our tees are over 40 years old, have clay soils, and have had literally thousands of golfers and machines running over them day after day for many decades. The effect this has on the soil is one that creates a concrete like surface making it near impossible for water to get down to the roots. When conditions get hot these soil conditions become bone dry and plant death becomes the end result. The only way to truly rectify this issue is to core and /or verti drain these areas and these cultural practices are performed frequently at bigger budget clubs. For us we don’t have the resources to undertake such tasks so we simply have to make do with what we have, but it will forever be a challenge while our tee soil profiles are as they are.
BUNKERS
We have added some sand to a number of our bunkers in an attempt to cover the matting that was appearing at the surface. The sand added has been from our pile that’s laid stagnant for a few months and this has resulted in the sand becoming quite clumpy in parts. I fully expect with more golf played, and the addition of rainfall to the sand that this clumpiness will go away, it must also be added that it is highly normal to take upwards of four weeks for newly added sand to settle down and perform properly.
This matting that separates the clay from the sand has caused some head aches over the past few months as it continues to appear above the sand. On top of golfers hitting out and raking the bunkers which has an obvious impact on this, the main issue we are faced with is animals impacting the mattings. Barely a morning goes by when rabbits and/or foxes have not dug out holes in our bunkers and interferes with the matting surface. Additionally we have birds (minor birds) coming into the bunkers and removing this matting with their beaks. Ground staff do our best to tidy up any of these areas before golfers play. With animals causing this damage I will admit that it makes coming up with a solution near impossible other than the obvious.
Although we have had complaints about not enough sand being in the base of our bunkers the opposite is said for the faces. I agree that some bunkers have an excessive amount of sand on the faces but it’s important to note that the matting underneath does require at least 2 inches of sand to be present on the face to protect it. I would like to reiterate that while we strive for a perfectly consistent sand depth throughout bunkers on the course this is an unrealistic expectation and something we will continue to work on.
What will certainly help is that if all golfers can take the time to rake their mess from bunker shots properly and cover over any matting that may appear, then it will go a long way to nullifying the problems that bunkers cause most golfers.
As we head into Autumn we generally get some great weather for golf, so here’s hoping to all of us getting gout for a game and taking advantage of it.
Ryan Hammond
DG&CC Course Superintendent
Filed under: Golf, Membership Level, Members Slider