The 'A' Word

Let's just get the bad news out of the way...  If you look at the club's golf calendar, you'll notice that the annual fairway aerification (the dreaded 'A' word) is scheduled to begin this Sunday afternoon.  This weekend, the course will definitely be wetter than normal. The coming wetness is needed to not only allow us to pull the deepest cores, but the fairways need to survive without water until aerification is complete.  Additionally, the extra water now will help them heal as quickly as is possible.  Most have been through this routine before and will hopefully agree that it's all a necessary evil. 

If everything goes as planned, nine holes should be open on Wednesday and the other nine on Thursday.  However, this timing can be altered by two factors:  the weather and equipment breakdowns (of the lack thereof).  Right now, the weather looks nearly perfect.  Besides a very small chance for a shower or two on Tuesday, Sunday and Monday are forecasted to be ideal.  After the cores are pulled from the ground, they must dry before we can chop them up, drag them in, and blow the remaining thatch of off the fairways.  Accordingly, the drying process is the biggest hold-up.  With heavy dew and a lot of shade, the southern halves of the fairways take a while to dry.  Sunny, warmish days with a little bit of wind are the best that we can hope for, and Sunday and Monday appear to be just that.  But, we all know that forecasts and reality don't always align.




The difficult-to-see brown cores around the 150 yard plaque on 2 fairway are a sampling of what's to come.

 For the past month or so, we have been getting a jump start on the process by aerifying some of the shadiest spots on 2, 6, and 15.  We pick the cores up from these areas and fill the holes with sand in order to minimize some of the mess that aerifying inevitably results in.  Today, we did the same around some sprinkler heads.  To allow for more precision than the big machines that do the bulk of the fairway aerifying are capable of, we aerify around each of the fairway irrigation heads and yardage plaques with a smaller machine.  And, by starting on it today, we'll have a jump start on the big machines on Sunday.  As the week progresses, I'm going to do my best to document the process that we use for aerifiying.

At the same time, we will also be doing some minor aerification on the greens.  Most will be aerified with a small-diameter solid tine that doesn't pull any soil to the surface, but a few of the greens that have the poorest soil profile with be core aerified with a small-diameter hollow tine that does pull some soil from the green.  After rolling and mowing, these small holes will be hardly noticeable by Wednesday, but they will allow the plants to send their roots down more easily.  With the heat (and associated root loss) that we had in July and August, this will provide a much-needed boost to the plants' health as we approach the end of the season.  Besides providing channels for root growth, aerifying reduces thatch through physical elimination during core processing and by incorporating oxygen that thatch-degrading microbes thrive on.  By keeping thatch in check and by encouraging root growth, this entire process pays off during summers like the one that we've had.

With the fantastic weather that we've been experiencing (albeit that two days around the Badgers' trouncing of UNLV), we were able to complete a few small projects before half of our crew departed for teaching high school and attending college.  The most notable improvement took place to the back of 8 championship tee.  Over the past two years, the bank had started eroding and something had to be done.

As you can see from the above pictures, we built a wall with treated railroad ties, back-filled the prior drop-off with soil, and added sod to complete the project.  Finally, a couple of invasive shrubs were removed and the trees were trimmed.  Even though the teeing surface is the same size as it was, it certainly feels much bigger now. Although it was a relatively small project, we think that it's a much-needed improvement.  Since we needed some bluegrass sod for this project, we ordered a little extra to finally complete the juniper removal by number 1 forward tee and to replace the worn-out area between the bunker and cart path by 4 green.

As the days get shorter and the leaves begin to show a tinge of color, fall is inevitably on its way.  The golf event calendar is nearly blank, but there will be plenty of great golf to be played after we complete the dreaded 'A' word.  It's almost hard to imagine that things are showing signs of winding down, but with a long, hot summer in the rear-view mirror and a dwindling crew on staff, the change is welcome one on our end.