The Heat is On

As much as we wish that 90+ degree weather with pea soup humidity would've stayed away this year, we knew that it would arrive at some point.  Thankfully, the weather is forecasted to break with the passage of cold front on Friday night.  Thus far, the course has been holding up quite well, and we've only had to do relatively minor afternoon hand-watering touchups.  Now, we just have to survive the next few days.

This hot, humid weather with persistent dew has been perfect for disease development, and we've seen dollar spot activity in the rough, cosmetic brown patch towards the back of 15 and 17 greens, and the ever-deadly pythium on a very few isolated fairway areas.  Yesterday, plant protectants were applied to all greens, tee, and fairways, and you will most likely not ever notice the diseases that popped up on Tuesday night.  In our minds, just a little bit of disease development means that we are timing our plant protectant applications appropriately and not wasting very expensive products.

Aside from normal maintenance, which has been keeping us very busy, we haven't undertaken any noteworthy products over the past few weeks.  However, the reshaping and sodding project that we completed earlier in the year by 18 green has established and matured very nicely.

For the first time this year, we've had to run the automatic irrigation system for more than three consecutive nights, and despite the moisture that is need to get the turf through this tough stretch of weather, the course has remained quite firm and fast.

In completely unrelated news, some may have noticed that we have a duck nesting at the base of hackberry tree that is to the left of hole 2.  While she doesn't seem to mind the occasional visitor, please be respectful of her nest and eggs.

As we've been telling our employees, be safe in the heat and drink more water than you think you need.