2.6.26 Update

January came in hot and left cold as ice. We started the month with day time highs of 85 degrees and as we got to the end of January, we recorded low temperatures that dipped down into the low 20s. These big changes the weather threw at us left the course looking very different from how it did just 30 days ago.

Thankfully our property is equipped with permeable turf covers that help insulate our putting surfaces when we get these cold snaps. The USGA recommends to cover new greens when temperatures reach 30 degrees F. We had two such events this past month when we hit this threshold and covered all the greens. We covered for 4 days total from January 23rd to January 27th, then we covered again the night of January 31st.

As you can see from the drone shot, much of the turf on property went dormant over the last 2 weeks or so. As I mentioned in my other email communication, this is a normal plant defense mechanism that helps the bermudagrass survive and avoid further injury during the winter months. The plants have simply lost color, stopped growing, and entered their dormancy stage.

The grass on property that went dormant will green up when conditions improve this Spring.

These large covers are held down to the ground using metal stakes. There are metal grommets every 36" or so on the tarps where we put the stakes and drive them into the soil using a hammer.

The tarps don't always fit the greens perfectly so on these areas where the fabric overhangs into the sand for example, we place sand bags and wooden posts / pallets to help hold down the tarp. We'll also place these types of items on the part of the green facing north.

The north wind can get very strong during these winter storm events so we take extra caution to help keep the tarps on the ground. (Speaking from experience here...we had the tarp on #5 and #7 blow off this go around when we didn't put any extra weight on the north slopes...lesson learned)

It's a big job for our team to manage and execute. We covered 42 greens total between Shadow Hawk and Black Hawk for the hard freeze between the 23rd and the 27th of January.

Using around 40 employees from multiple departments, it takes us about 7 hours or so to cover all the greens on both courses.

I appreciate the support from the golf shop and the club as we had to shut down the tee sheet early to help ensure our staff had ample time to accomplish this work before the worse of the storm blew down.

The tarps did exactly what they had to do and you can see from the straight lines near greens just how well they help hold extra warmth and protect the grass plants.

There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes making sure we are protecting our assets during these freeze events. For example, we run space heaters in our pump station to keep the temperatures up in this building to help protect the components from freezing.

Shorter days and below freezing overnight lows in January have made it difficult to generate any new growth and help the putting greens recover from maintenance and play. The practice green by #1 tee started to show signs of stress so we made the decision to close it for the next two weeks to allow it to recover from this difficult stretch of weather.

We've taken many precautious measures treating it with extra care and we saw some positive signs of recovery on this green when the temperatures were warmer in December and when we removed some of the trees to promote more sunlight.

We will reevaluate it during the middle of February to see how it's recovering and make a decision about reopening it.

Some other happenings and observations from the course:

Walked this area of #3 after an 1" rain event and the drainage we installed helped moved a lot of the water off the surface quick and away from this area. Happy with the results so far.

We've started to remove the old gravel area between #9 green and #10 tee. This area will be sodded towards the end of the month to match the existing grass around it.

Quick shout out and thank you to the golf staff for helping to rotate and utilize the square footage on the practice tee. We're about to flip back to the left side of the tee and I'm happy with recovery and playability as it's been able to grow in while we've used the right side.

My favorite new pin on #13 green. I'll be walking all the greens Friday dotting hole locations for Saturdays Scramble event so expect some fun ones.

Rough heights were brought up higher heading into the fall to help create better definition and contrast between the fairways. As you can see from the video above, they are quite penal currently, with the ball settling down into the mat of grass. Since we have minimal cart traffic currently, it's standing very upright.

I mowed a test line down the left side of #3 where we went with a lower height of cut.

We are planning on doing this property wide to accomplish a few tasks.

First, we want to remove the dormant bermuda grass tissue and allow the healthier grass underneath to grow in, creating a uniform stand of green tissue. Scalping down the rough will also remove all the weed pressure we faced this winter. We've recently spayed to eliminate the weeds and the scalping process will help clean these areas up further.

Secondly, this older dormant material creates a "thatch" layer that inhibits our spring pre-emerge herbicides from making contact with the soil. Removing this material allows us to better apply our products, resulting in better control of weeds.

We should still see contrast between the roughs and fairways but overall, conditions should play easier for the next 4 weeks or so until the bermuda grass starts to grow again.

With the weather improving, we've hosted some training seminars for our crew to go over best practices heading into Spring. Here we are explaining to our team the importance of using turning boards to protect our young turf.

Justin in this video is showing proper turning technique on one of our rollers. He's getting the roller lined up for his next pass before he reaches the end of the putting surface.

Thanks for reading and for being a member,

Willie