Course Update

You know that it is dry when a local news channel's lead story is about drought-ridden lawns and that's exactly what happened last night.  The last significant rainfall that the golf course received was 0.6" on May 30.  Since then, we've received 0.2" of rain, and the recent stretch of hot, windy days certainly exacerbated the dry conditions.  Thankfully, we entered this heatwave with very good rooting depth, and the playing surfaces have thus held up quite well.  Over the past few days, two people have been handwatering dry spots all day.  However, since our double-row fairway irrigation system is only able to water the edges of the rough, the wider rough areas are drying out substantially.  Over the past two weeks, I have been using portable sprinklers attached to 100' hoses in an effort to keep these dry rough areas from entering dormancy, but it has been impossible to keep up with the evapotranspiration rates that we've been experiencing.  Accordingly, unless we received a substantial (greater than a half inch) rainfall tonight, the rough will continue to be quite dry.

The positive side of the dryness is that this heat didn't bring any disease with it, and we're hoping that the drier rootzones will have prevented the turf roots from essentially boiling to death.  While it's too soon to know for sure, our roots may have survived the heat (fingers crossed).

If you play this weekend, you may notice that the rough and green banks are longer than normal, and this is being done in preparation for the Taylormade Invitational that is being held here on Monday.  Things will return to normal on Tuesday.

When we haven't been handwatering, we've completed a few small projects over the past two weeks, and the most noticeable was the addition of a perennial garden to the back right of 16 green.  This area was unsightly from its frequent use as an unofficial cart path, and we hope that you like the garden and its associated walking path.  We also completed come sod work behind 10 green and by the 6 tee bathrooms.  Due to shade issues and cart traffic, the back left of 10 green had developed grass-less tracks, and with a little cart traffic control and the previously-removed tree that cast a significant amount of shade on this area, we're cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to keep some turf here.

Rain or not, we're looking forward to the break in weather that is coming tonight, but an inch of rain sure would be nice (and much needed).