Tournament Preparation and Tournament Conditions

The 2010 Pucksters is completed and throughout the weekend there was plenty of generous comments about the course condition. Every department has plenty of behind the scenes work before any tournament date. I can only speak to what happens at my end but I know the Proshop and Food and Beverage have been equally busy getting things organized. We really started preparing for this tournament at the beginning of August (actually almost all of our maintenance decisions throughout the year are made with one eye on the events calendar and tee sheet in an effort to minimize interference). The two obvious things I can somewhat influence with respect to preparing the golf course for a tournament are the height of cut (HOC) and fertility. The third most important thing, I feel, is moisture but that one is pretty variable depending on weather and the irrigation system. With respect to the first two the underlying factor is the general health of the turf; the weaker it is the more I'll baby it. We have been lucky weather wise and despite the questionable conditions this spring the rest of the year has been great for growing grass...very few stupid hot days in 30's and lots of cool nights (the biggest thing IMO) with some real good rain days. Anyways, the general health throughout the whole property was pretty good so we were able limit the fertility (mostly the nitrogen) and lower the HOC on the greens a wee bit. Luckily everything fell into place and the greens, in particular, seemed to play good.
The one question I sometimes get is "Why can't the greens always be like they are for tournaments?". The short answer is "Because they would die". The long answer is more complicated. The reality about KGC green surfaces is there is plenty of problems including inadequate irrigation, no subsurface drainage, limited sun light, and poor air circulation just to name a few of the more obvious problems. The inputs (fertility, fungicides, water, etc.) and maintenance (aerating, grooming, top dressing, etc) would all have to increase and we neither have the budget nor the staff to accommodate everything that would be required. Perception is pretty important too. I have been taking "speed" readings on the greens for every tournament over the past couple years in an effort to keep a record and compare green speed between years and tournaments. Guidelines with respect to green speed are for regular "member" play a speed of 7'6" to 8'6" is considered medium (FYI: the distance of 7'6" -7 feet and 6inches- relates to how far a ball rolls on a green when released from a tool called a stimp meter) while a speed above 8'6" is considered fast. For tournament play 8'6" to 9'6" is called medium and anything above 9'6" is fast. For tournaments at KGC the speed over the last 3 years has been between 9' and 10' (another FYI: studies show that golfers can only distinguish speed differences between greens when the stimp reading is greater than 12" between greens). Why do I bring this all up? Perception: for the Wood Valence in June the stimp reading was 9'2"; for the Club Championship in July the reading was 9' while for the Pucksters the stimp was 10'3". As far as the research in concerned the speed between those three tournaments was close to the same. I think a lot of what people experience in tournament conditions is not the speed so much as the smoothness of the surfaces. Our maintenance practices of brooming, topdressing, verti-cutting, and aerating all disrupt the surfaces and, as a result, affect the smoothness of the roll. So the fourth most important thing we do when perparing for a tournament is limit surface disruption. Necessary maintenance practices we perform on a regular basis throughout the season cause surface disruption and that is also why the greens don't roll like they do on tournament days. As usual I've babbled too long so that's where I'll leave it.

River Watch

August 25th

The river is still giving us what we need. We have begun to build a weir out into the main channel in anticipation of the river dropping too much. The rain on Sunday, August 29th will bring the river up but unless it is snow up high the increase in river flow won't last long enough.

Verti-cut

Vertical mowing (Verti-cutting) is a one of those maintenance practices people hear about but may not understand why it is done. As usual, explaining involves a little background info. I'll be pretty fast and loose (as usual) with the "facts" but generally most of what is written is accurate....the info can be more detailed but that has a tendency to translate into more boring.

Bentgrass has a creeping growth and on putting greens it spreads via stolons not seed. This type of growth can lead to "grain" which is a term used to describe a situation where the turf leaves are all laying in one direction (usually down hill or what ever way the water flows). Putting with the grain exaggerates the roll and break. Putting against the grain has the opposite affect on ball roll (i.e. slower and less break). Generally, grain is more of problem at higher heights of cut (HOC) since there is more leaf blade to lay over. However, at lower HOC when we are trying to grow the greens with more emphasis on density and root growth we can sometimes create conditions which may lead to somewhat "grainy" turf. One method for controlling grain is vertical mowing. The cutting heads we use (3 heads in total) contain 36 tightly spaced carbide tipped blades with 10 teeth per blade for a total of 108 blades (1080 teeth).

Blades on a single verti-cut mowing head

Triplex mower with Verti-cut reels operating

You can adjust the depth of the verti-cut heads to achieve desired results. For example, this spring we went about 1/2" deep on the weak greens to increase light and water penetration as well as to remove thatch and, hopefully, cut any existing bentgrass stolons which would then develop into shoots and help increase density. This time out we were more focused on grain control (i.e. standing up the turf that was laying over) and did not go as deep. Verti-cutting doesn't immediately speed up a green but may instead make for a bumpier and slower green. One way to address the bumpiness is to follow the verti-cut with a light sand top-dressing. The sand will level the grooves left by the verti-cut blades as well as protect any damaged turf from drying out.

Top Dressing Being Applied

If you played this past week you would have seen the linear lines left from the verti-cut heads. Usually, with a light verti-cutting the lines will grow out within a 6 or 7 days. Most likely we will do one more later in the season but this time the emphasis will be more on thatch removal since controlling the thatch in greens is one way to lessen opportunities for overwintering diseases. The more astute of you will note that I reference verti-cutting as it relates to bentgrass not Poa annua which is the turf species I claim inhabits all our greens. Poa is more a upright, clump type growth which is less prone to grain. We have enough greens with a blend of both bent an poa that verti-cutting for grain control is necessary. Perennial poa can spread laterally via stolon so verti-cutting on old poa greens may increase density by cutting stolons. Also, even at the higher height we verti-cut this time out, we removed extra material that could contribute to thatch development.

River Watch

August 18

This week saw the first time the river pumps (also called transfer pumps) shut down because of low water at the river intake. It took 2 guys most of a day to dig, expose, and clean out the area around the river intake with shovels and garden rakes. The end result was the ability to re-start both pumps inside the transfer station. The red paint mark on the rock on the right of the picture is there so we know how deep to dig to expose the conduit leading to the river intake (FYI conduit is 47" below the paint mark). This late in the year as the flow in the river decreases you can observe a visual difference daily versus weekly.

Vertidrain

I have been lazy over the past couple weeks and have not posted much; however, like I said at the very beginning if there is not much going on I probably won't post. We've been lucky in that over the month of August there has not been a lot of breaking news on the golf course or tragedies to address. We are mostly in the routine of regular maintenance. We did aerate the greens the week of August 1st using a deep tine aeration method.

Deep Tine Aerator on 12 Green

The advantage to this style of aeration is two fold: 1.) aeration holes can be go as deep as 9" (versus 3.5"-4" for regular aeration) and 2.) the machine has the ability to loosen the subsurface for greater relief of compaction. The "kick" that relieves the subsurface compaction can also fluff up the greens (mostly because of our limited roots and heavy soils) and tends to make the surface bumpy. We do use 5-10% kick during our late fall aeration when play has stopped. To be fair, this time out we were only interested in creating holes for air exchange/water infiltration.

Needle Tine Holes

We were only able to get about 7" penetration and went with a slightly larger spacing. We could have gone the full depth and double the tines to get the biggest bang for our buck but with this type of aeration you need to fiddle around quite a bit to find the happiest medium between surface disruption (i.e. playability) and intensity of aeration. As we do more of this style of aeration and, hopefully, the greens overall health increases we should be able to go deeper and tighter. The real interesting part about this process is how and why are able to accomplish it. The general benefits of aeration (air exchange, compaction relief, thatch removal, blah, blah, blah) I'll harp on about in other posts. What I would like to cover here is the savings and the unique relationship that have developed. In the past we would contract out the deep tine to the tune of over $4000/aeration and since we weren't on the "A" list of clients we had to take whatever date the contractor offered. The very last time the contractor was able to fit us in the greens were frozen. As a result, and $4000 later, there was some greens we were unable to aerate completely and others that were damaged. Since buying our own deep tine aerator for $22,000 we have been able to deep tine 3 times at times that suit us. At the end of this year we will do one more deep tine for a total of 4 and a savings of $16,000. By the end of next year --assuming we keep the same schedule--we will have paid for the deep tine. There is costs associated with owning a machine but for the first few years those are mostly the cost of tines. The unique relationship part of this story relates to the tractor needed to operate the deep tine aerator. The tractor required needs to be of a minimum horse power and have a ultra low gear selection (sometimes called a "creeper gear") not to mention wide tires. KGC's tractor has none of these. As luck would have it, Trickle Creek does have a tractor that meets this requirements and they contract out their deep tine aeration's. So KGC has a deep tine aerator with no tractor to operate it and Trickle has tractor but pays to have their greens deep tined. This scenario obviously lead to a relationship that is best represented by the over used and usually self serving phrase "a Win/Win situation". With the two local golf course working together and sharing equipment we are able to take advantage of a highly specialized tool. Ultimately, KGC will have to replace our old Ford tractor but with the initial success of this particular equipment sharing experiment there is a possibility for local courses to purchase other specialized equipment and share amongst ourselves.

River Watch

August 8th

The huge rain events that kept coming last week have made watering a no brainer. But as you can see the river still continues to drop. There is more water at the river intake this year versus other years and as the middle of August approaches the watering requirements are usually less than early in the year so things appear "rosy". I feel a little bit like Chicken Little, but history is on my side.