Course conditions and #7 tee

Once again I have neglected my blogging duties.  Usually the time comes for me to write a blog when we have a rain day.  But, the rain days have been few and far between for the last month.  The comments are still coming in about how the golf course is in such good shape.  I will take this opportunity to thank you all for those comments.  Sometimes I get hung up on the negative comments I receive.  It is amazing how quickly a bad comment can change you day. Anyways my skin thickens every time and I am learning to concentrate on the good comments and take the bad one for what they are worth.

# 7 Green on the second day of men's club championship (Double Cut and Roll)

We are now well into September and my staff has been cut in half.  So how do we pull off preparing the golf course every morning with half staff.  Well it involves a lot of multitasking,  some good experience doesn't hurt either.  A good experienced cutter makes cutting in play a work of art.  So with that said you will notice the mowers out a little later in the day due the shorter staff and the shorter day light.  Sometimes you might even see some things get done in the evening.

# 1 Fairway with two mowers cutting right before lunch

Many times in the turf industry things don't go as planned.  For example as I write this a severe thunderstorm is passing through.  Everything that was planned for tomorrow will most likely be adjusted.  As most of you know the forward tee on number seven has been stripped of its turf and re levelled.  The plan was to have this tee finished in two weeks and back open for play. Unfortunately weather made us change our plans.  The plan was to sod the tee, but with an untimely rain and this current heat wave, we pushed off sodding to the point where it was just easier to get the seed down.

It is always nice to have a little youth on the staff

The old surface is tilled up several times

Then it is levelled off.

Then it is levelled again and again!

Thanks for your patience with this process on #7 tee.  There will be grass growing there before you know it.

Cheers Kendall

What are those bricks for?

Since their  installation back in the spring I have been asked what are those bricks for?  The bricks can be found on all holes except the par threes.  

Above is the brick on #3 as you can see it is located in the fairway cut right beside the intermediate rough.  This lets the fairway cutters know how far up to go.  As well it shows the smaller triplex unit that cuts the approach how far down to cut.

Here is Corey cutting on #7 making his pass right over the brick. 

Here is the fairway unit cutting towards the approach.  You are probably thinking that it is easy to see where to cut to.  The dew has been knocked off where Corey has already cut. On this particular day it was easy, but the cuts are not always made on the same day.  Plus as well Corey knows exactly where I want him to cut, he doesn't have to worry about how far he is going out.  Before the cutter always seemed to make extra passes just to make sure they went far enough.  Then the fairway would also make extra passes.  This adds up when these areas are cut three times a week. That adds up to a lot of man hours and diesel.  

Here I am making the pass sideways right at the brick.

The brick is a indicator for the cutter to be more efficient when cutting.  I use to see over cutting and sometimes under cutting which led to missed grass.  Now they are cut perfect every time.

Cheers Kendall 

The heat was on.

The last 12 plus days have been a little trying, for Golf Course Superintendents.  I can only speak for myself but I know I checked the weather probably 25 times a day for those 12 days.   The only problem, it’s the weather it is very unpredictable. “It is what it is” this was uttered quite often by me, and that about sums it up.

I am happy to report that the turf at the Parkway preformed very good.   It is Saturday night and I just finished an hour tour of the property and I am quite pleased with what I see.  There is no doubt that the course was under stress.  But, that is to be expected the last seven days alone the temperature never dropped below 23 C and it was 100% humidity every night.  Several times in the last week we had late afternoon or early even rain showers.  This is one the worst things that can happen.  The turf is wet for too long and the fungus takes over. If you were out on Tuesday you saw this first hand.  I call that “lit up”.

Pythium in the newly seede bluegrass on 15 tee complex

Pythium in the morning

Pythium in the afternoon

The routine is simple when we get into those hot stretches.  Water only when needed, by hand and never at night.  Watch everything, the more eyes the better.  If you played this week you probably noticed a lot of irrigation flags on the fairways.  These were marked by Ruth the Assistant Golf Course Superintendent.  She would scout for the disease and then mark it for me to check out and spray.  The answer is yes there were a lot of flags and they were on every hole.  

The next week the temperatures look better and the night time temperatures look even better.

 

Oh I almost forgot about #12.  When it seemed like we were pushed to the limit with disease, and the staff had had just about enough.  The greens mower blew a hydraulic line.  As most of you seen as you play Wednesday and Thursday.  My staff and I really appreciate the sympathy from the marjority of the membership.  We appreciate all the comments.  It is discouraging when something like this happens, but with a little hard work and sweat the team plugged out the injuried turf.  Hopefully with in a week it will be barely noticable.  To the one group of members that were more concerned about how the flag was the wrong colour for 5 minutes well "It is what it is."

Oil leak on #12

 

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.  If you have sent me something, dont't worry I will be responding as soons as possible.

kendalllindsay@hotmail.com 

Cheers Kendall

Long overdue

It seems like yesterday I finished my last post and here we are over a month later already.  As always lots has happened here at the parkway.  For the most part it has just maintaining the property and the equipment. 

I have received a lot of comments over the last month.  The majority of them have been about the condition of the golf course.  I have received the same comment several times “the golf course has never been in better shape.”  Now of course I would love to tell you that it is all me and that the practices I have incorporated over the last few years are starting to pay off.  But, I think we will chalk this one up to mother-nature.  Golf courses to the north and south of us have been getting hammered with rain.  The parkway continues to get timely rains that always seem to be the perfect amount.  Along with this we have just entered our second heat wave of the season.  The slow spring made me nervous because I believed the turf was not going to have enough time to get ready for summer.  But, June never came with any heat, which allowed for the turf to achieve the health that it has now.

That being said I did come into this season with a plan.  After the summer of 2012 which was one of the hottest on record.  It was in early June of that year when I started to worry whether the grass had enough to make it through the summer.  Late July all efforts were focused just on keeping the greens alive.  The fairways showed a lot of stress but bounced back for the most part.  The tees however did not.  In the end we lost what I would consider as 20% of the tees.  Through the winter I got a chance to go over my records and try to figure out where I could improve.  As well look back at the decisions I made in 2012 and see what I could learn from the good ones and of course the bad ones.  In the end it was simple I would make more of an effort to make the turf as healthy as possible.  To achieve this health I needed to be more consistent with our cultural practices. 

Here is a time line of the cultural practices for 2013

April 8^th & 9^th Sliced fairways

April 9^th Fertilizer on all greens and tees

April 29^th Vertical Cut in 2 directions Greens

April 30^th Top dressed Greens, Vertical cut Collars in 2 directions and top dressed them individually

May 7^th Vertical Cut Front nine fairways

May 8^th Vertical Cut 10-18 Fairways

May 13^th Vertical cut greens in 2 directions and Top dressed, Vertical cut tees in 2 directions and top dressed

May 14^th Fertilize Tees

May 21^st Fertilize Greens

June 3^rd Vertical cut in 2 directions on Greens, Sliced fairways

June 4^th Top Dressed Greens, finished slicing fairways

June 5^th Fertilize Greens, Sliced Approaches and tees

June 18^th Vented Greens

June 19^th Finished venting Greens, Verti cut Tees

July 2^nd   Vertical Cut and Top dressed

July 3^rd   Fertilize greens

July 10^th & 11^th Sliced Fairways, Tees and Approaches

This is a quick timeline of the cultural practices that are being performed at the parkway.  These are all very time consuming tasks, which makes it easy to put them off.  But, they are extremely benificial to the turf’s health.   

Vertical Cutters

Venting of 16 Green

Fairway Slicer On # 1

Tee and Approch slicer on #6

A shot of the spikes

Here is a soil probe of # 17 Green the roots go down to the subsoil

We just went through the second heat wave of the summer and the turf responded wonderfully.  The plan for this season is to get the turf into the best shape it can be in.  We are going to slice things once a month. This opens things up and gives the chance for some air exchange for the roots.  It also helps with water penetration.  So far we have opened up the fairways, tees and approaches once in May, June, July, and we would like to do at least one more in August.  The turf has responded nicely and the timely rains have helped as well. 

As always contact me for any issues or concerns

kendalllindsay@hotmail.com

Cheers Kendall

Collar addition to the putting green and more!

The last couple weeks have been extremely busy here at the parkway.  The weather has been absolutely great for growing grass, as you all know.   I certainly hear about the rough every day.  The good news is the grass has begun to slow down and the mowers are getting caught up with the grass and the complaints seem to be slowing down. 

We are very fortunate to have great staff working here at the parkway.  There are people here that are willing to go the extra mile so to speak.  Luckily the students in the maintenance department are some of these employees.  But, of course they have good examples to follow like Ruth, Don, Tyler, Richard, and Keith.  Without staff like this, we would not be able to pull of some of the crazy ideas that I come up with.  Not only do they get the tasks done, they also keep the course in great playing conditions as well.      

The past week we put a collar around the putting green.  This all came about my first year here when we extended the green towards the north.   When this happened it was my intention to put a collar around the green and at the same time it would allow me to install a sprinkler head at the north end of the green.  Well it took a couple of years but finally we stripped the sod, dug the trench, installed the sprinkler and sodded the collar.  At the end of the green the collar that was added is a lot wider, this will be cut down to green height in the fall.  The end result will be one pass with a mower at collar/fringe height all the way around the green.

We borrowed a trencher to install the sprinkler head on the putting green. 

 

The sod that was stripped to put back on 15 tee and those tees were squared up.  The sod from the tee then came up to the putting green. 

As always Lexi has her two cents to put in.

 

Garden irrigation was installed around our sign at the front entrance.

As well there two sprinklers installed on the main decks on 14.  Before there were only two heads to cover these two teeing areas and both sprinklers threw water to the east.  Now there are two sprinkler heads on the other side throwing water back to the west, helping the tee by providing double coverage.  The two alternate tees on 14 did not have proper irrigation so we moved up a sprinkler to cover these two decks.  Finally to complete the few days of chaos we added a sprinkler head on the back of 13 tee complex as well.    

All of these additions are going to help to keep healthier turf and a beautiful front enterance to boot.

 

As always if you have any questions please fell free to contact me.

kendalllindsay@hotmail.com

Cheers Kendall 

Spring Update

It has been awhile since my last blog and as always a lot has happened.  The last two weeks we have welcomed back four of our main staff and five students.  Now that staff is back we are slowly getting caught up with the grass. 

Rough: We will start with the rough because it is most likely the one the golfers are most concerned about.  With the record amount of rainfall that we had in April it certainly set us up for the grass to explode in the first two weeks of May.  I assure you the rough is being cut as much as possible.  The mower runs Monday to Friday eight hours a day.  Then as well it runs on the weekends till the grass starts to slow down.

Fairways:  With that first initial growth we had in the beginning of May, the fairways as well became quite long and there were a lot of clippings left on them.  Usually we will drag the fairways with a homemade unit consisting of a pipe, rope and some chain.  The chain collects the clippings and then disperses them in the rough when you turn around.  This unit is also used to knock of the dew in the mornings that we do not cut the fairways.  This decreases the time that the turf is wet, reducing the chance of fungus to develop in the turf.    Last week we took the opportunity in the afternoon to verti cut most of the fairways.  This has helped thin out the turf and reduce the clippings.  As well the dry cut in the afternoon has helped us get caught up to the speedy growth of the turf.

Tees: All four sets of tee blocks have been set out onto the course.  New decals have been ordered for them, they will be put on as soon as they arrive. Last year when the summer stress came the tees were the first to show signs of weak turf.    We ended up losing about 20% of the tees, mainly it was blue and red decks that suffered.  There are many reasons for this but mainly it is due to the way the irrigation system was put in. When the tee complexes were built they dead ended the pipe.  So the red and blue decks generally only have one irrigation head to water them.  Where the rest of the decks have double coverage, which means the sprinklers throw the water to the next head.  This week we will be verti cutting the tees and topdressing them to help control the thatch.  The end goal is to make the tees healthier so they have a better chance to survive the summer stress. 

Top Dressing Collars

 

Collars:  I have heard a lot of criticism over the collars since my arrival.  I have heard them described by one member as ‘weird’ and another says they are like ‘velcro.’  Since last fall we have made an effort to give extra care to the collars.  It is very easy to skip cultural practices (verti cut, top dress, vent, aerate) on the collars because the greens take up so much time.  For the most part I have got the membership to realize that I need some time in the mornings to get these practices done.  Now we are attempting to verti cut the collars and top dress them when the greens are getting done.  The overall goal here is healthier turf.

Greens:  Our first cut of the year was on Sunday April 7^th at a height of cut of .140 (9/64^th).  The greens were only cut 5 more times in April because of the poor weather.  We lowered the height of cut to .130 on May 3^rd.  This is still our height of cut till later in the week when we go to .125 (1/8^th).  The lowest the height of cut has ever been on the greens is .115 last year from late August on till bring your best. 

The last three seasons we have managed to verti cut the greens quite aggressively in the month of April.  In previous updates I touched on how much grass and thatch we were removing from the greens.  This year April was basically a wash, with only a hand full of days that were decent to get any work done.  The first week of May we finally got out and double verti cut the greens and a top dressed followed.  Now it is two weeks later and we are getting in another double verti cut and top dress in.  This will help the greens finish their healing from last year’s aeration.  This will also smooth them out, allowing for better ball roll and hopefully better golfer satisfaction! 

 

Other things that were done over the last couple of weeks:

Pump station had to be ajusted from some settling

Pump House intake had to be installed
 

 

    As well the irrigation lines have been charged.

 

As always if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me

kendalllindsay@hotmail.com

 

Cheers Kendall

 

  

Cart Path Rules at the Parkway

With records rains all over the province last week and one inch in the rain gauge this morning.  I believe now is as good a time as any to talk about the cart path rules here at St. Clair Parkway Golf Course.  One of the first decisions made by the turf department every morning is the cart rules for the day.  When making this decision, a lot of things have to be considered.  How wet is it?  What is the forecast for the rest of the day?  How busy is the tee sheet?  Are there proper staffing in place to enforce the cart rules of the day?  Is there staffing to clean the carts at the end of the day?  Will the Golfers even obey the rules?  All these questions come into mind when making the decision.  You have to understand that the goal here is to make the right decision for the golf course, not the golfer.   Here are the carts rules that we have.

 

Normal Golf Cart Rules: 

Drive the cart responsibly

Avoid sharp turns, even with the smoother tires the turf can be torn

Use cart paths whenever possible

Obey cart exit signs.  When you come to the cart exit signs follow the arrows and exit to the cart path.  Stay on the cart path to the next hole.

Fairways Only Cart Rule:

Carts are allowed to go from the cart path to the fairway at a 90 degree angle.  Once in the fairway they are allowed to stay until they get to the cart exit signs. 

No Carts in the rough

No Carts in the tree lines

Cart Paths Only Rule:

Carts are to stay on the path at all times.

              Stay on paths when approaching a puddle, slow down and drive through the puddle slowly.

 No Cart Rule:

This one seems simple right!  Well it has come to my attention that some of you feel carts should be allowed to go all of the time because we have cart paths.  Here are the reasons we do not allow carts to go out some days. 

Cart paths are washed out

Cart paths are still flooded

Water over the bridge on #6

The puddles on the paths are too deep for the carts to pass

The potential damage to the carts and the course, make the labour involved in repairing the cart or the damage to the course not worth it.  

Handicap Cart Rules

Allowed to by-pass the cart exit signs, and access the green from the back.  Parking on the Inter-rough cut of grass no closer.

Cart path only rule, they are not allowed to leave the path

Fairways only rule, they are not allowed to by-pass the cart exit signs

Handicap rule only applies when the conditions are for Normal Cart traffic

#7 Golfer decided to cross the wettest fairway we have.

#16 Golfers decided to drive in the tree line to look for there ball.  The cart path is right there.

Golfers decided to drive into a saturated area in the rough on #18.  You would think after the first golfer went in there the second golfer would know better.

 

Well, no more winter updates!  Now we are into spring, I know you have probably heard this one already “what a difference a year makes.”  Last spring at this time the golf season was in full swing.  We opened on the 11^th of March and never really looked back weather wise.  This year we managed to get open in March but for the second last day and just for walkers.  One thing I will say is that there were quite a few dedicated golfers out there yesterday getting in their first round of the year.  I will promise you this, the weather will get better – let’s just hope your golf games do too! 

The last month has been filled with varying tasks to get the course ready to be open.  The first thing that needed to be crossed off the list of tasks was bridge repair.  All four bridges that cross Baby Creek needed some attention in one way or another.  Number 10 bridge needed the most work.  The plywood floor had to be torn up, as well a couple of the support boards underneath.  The exit ramp of the bridge was totally replaced as well. 

Support board that has seen better days

Replaced support board

Ruth replacing the exit ramp with new boards

Bridge nearing completion

 The bridge on the 7^th hole has always been of concern.  It just seems to be in an awkward position on the hill.  The railings were too low so they were removed and raised.  As well as the matting and a couple floor supports were torn up and replaced.   

  The other two bridges just needed minor repairs.  All the bridges will receive new coats of paint and stain when some reinforcements arrive in the summer months. (Students)

Another task to get off the list was to clean up the aeration cores off of the fairways.  We rented a tractor mounted blower and spent two very cold days getting the fairways ready for their first cut which will probably happen late next week.

Also all the benches were brought into the shop for repair and paint.  So if you find your favorite resting place is missing rest assured they will be all back out shortly.

We have been watching the weather very closely trying to decide when the first cut on the greens will happen.  It was very tempting to cut them on Thursday, but after the frost lifted we got out there and realized that the greens were actually still frozen.  So we retreated to try another day.  Now we are hoping to cut them Saturday afternoon, because Sunday is starting to look like a beauty day.  

In my younger days I was known to catch a fish or two with my Grandfather up on the Bruce Peninsula.  I’m usually not one to tell tall tales of catching fish but, I am very proud to say that there is a fish catcher in my family.  Not a fisherman, but a fish catcher.  You heard right… Lexi caught a fish!  Unfortunately I missed it all and there are no pictures, but the story goes like this:  Ruth and Don were repairing the bridge on 7.  Lexi was trolling the creek close by.  Ruth heard some splashing about, looked over and saw Lexi with her head completely under the water.  Couple of seconds later she came up with a fish!  (agoonie goo goo!) She dragged it up out of the creek quite proud of herself and at the same time a bit confused about what to do with it.  Ruth and Don placed the fish back into the creek and now we all have a tale to tell about Lexi the fish catcher!  Of course I will carry on the tradition that every time I tell the story my hands will get a little further apart about how big it was. 

Lexi trolling

 

As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact me at kendalllindsay@hotmail.com

 

          Cheers Kendall

 

Winter Update

The course is wintering well.  We had a relatively mild lead up to Christmas.  Boxing day we received well over a foot of snow that seemed to stick around for the better part of two weeks.  When it did melt it was a sloppy slushy mess.  All the turf looks good so far except for some snow mobile damage.  There is some disease on the low lying areas of the fairways.  These areas were not treated with chemical.  The greens and tees were treated and they look good so far.  With the cold temps that are on their way it would be nice to have a nice 6 inches of snow as a cover.  But, we have to take what mother nature gives us.  There is no ice on the greens which is a relief.  Plus everything looks good so far.  Here some snap shots of the course with a little snow on it.



 

 

 

Cheers Kendall