Mother Nature: Good and Bad

It's been a very busy few weeks on the golf course, and this morning's rain is finally giving me a little bit of time to provide an update.  Over the past two weeks, the majority of our summer crew arrived, and it was just in the nick of time.  Thursday's windstorm created an absolute mess on the golf course, and all hands were needed to make the course playable again.  In the eight years that I've worked at Blackhawk, it was the messiest that I've ever seen the course.  Our crew did a tremendous job of getting everything back in shape for the Memorial Day weekend.  There may still be a few more leaflets and sticks lying around than normal, but the course's transformation from Friday morning to afternoon was remarkable.  Below are a few pictures that illustrate the mess that we had to deal with:

Two large maple limbs (above and below) broke off between holes 10 and 12.  Both of these trees were already slated for removal, and Mother Nature just gave us a head start on taking them down.

A large section of a crabapple on the range nearly hit our irrigation satellite.

This linden tree on the left side of 7 actually broke off below ground.  Thus, there's no stump to grind.



Two trees also snapped off by the lift that runs up the hill behind 9 green.  One was a box elder, and the other was a tree that had already died.  Luckily, no one was on the lift when either fell.

While the large limbs and downed trees did take a significant amount of time to deal with, the majority of our time was spent blowing smaller sticks and leaves off of the greens, tees, fairways, and green banks.

The picture above shows what the edges of most of the fairways looked like after they had been blown off.

But, on a positive note, we finally received some much-needed rain overnight and into this morning.  It had been 19 days since our last rainfall, and with warm air temperatures, low dew points, and windy days, our irrigation system was working overtime.  Although the course was playing very fast and firm, unirrigated rough areas were beginning to exhibit drought stress.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!