Opening Update for Week of April 22

A short note as opening day nears.  The course will open the front nine on Wednesday, April 25.  All greens will be in play but not necessarily all the bunkers (same old, same old).  We have aerated and top dressed 11 greens  and will finish the rest off next week in anticipation of all 18 holes opening for Saturday, April 28.

Aside from the aerating we will continue with starting up irrigation, cleaning up tree litter, preparing the bunkers, and mowing turf.  Mostly things are good with some nuisance problems on a few greens. I'll go into more detail once as the opening date gets closer.

Some shots to whet your appetite

We mowed a couple greens today so I thought I would post some pictures showing what things look like.  Typically, the impact of the pictures is lost once I see them on the computer so I encourage people to go for a walk around and take a look.

First Mowing #1 Green

First Mowing #9 Green

Both these green had tons of grass on them.  Both have some small weak areas that are slow to come but now that they have been mowed and the soil temperature continues to go up I can start in on getting them up to speed, so to speak.  Interestingly enough all the problem area are in the shade.....hmmmm....strange........

Don't get too excited, however, since there is still snow out there:

#14 Fairway

Next week we will continue to mow some of the warmer greens and probably begin to work towards a opening sometime after next weekend.

Starting to See More Green

I know I've been lazy so I'll throw out this quick update.  Sunny days are helping and things have really moved over the past couple weeks.  Most greens are good with small problems on the usual suspects.  I am not sure why but the upper putting green (or some call it the new putting green) is dead.  That whole thing deserves its own post so I'll comment on that later.

The usual suspect greens are a combination of tarped greens and those other greens with a bit of a history of being difficult.  Time and heat are a good combination for most problems.

7G March 29

7G April 2

I was glad to see how quickly the plug greened up.  The problem, as is always the case in spring, is how to get the whole surface to green up that fast.


Take a look at these:

15 Green April 5

15 Green April 11

Soil temperature for the top picture was 12 degrees C while soil temperature for the the bottom picture was 15 degrees (temperature taken at about 1.5 inches below the surface).  One weeks time and an increasing soil temperature has made a big difference in the appearance of this green.  What I'm not showing you is the back of this green.  On April 5 soil temperatures were only 5 degrees C and the turf was very brown.  Today the soil temperature was 9.5 and the back looked like:

Back 15 Green April 11

No screaming hell but the point of all these pictures is to show how soil temperatures and not necessarily air temperatures are important in getting the turf to green up in the spring.