2022 Golf Season – First Round Experiences

The beginning of the golf season has taken awhile to arrive, and its preceding weather to has been anything but conventional. So here’s a few things you can expect to encounter if you’re playing your first round of golf this opening weekend:

 

• Deep tine holes on greens, tees, and fairways. We deep tine playing surfaces right before winter sets in, as a winter survival tactic. It’s proven very effective over the past several years, preventing ice accumulation damage. However, with the preceding weather, we haven’t had many chances to roll the holes out as we normally do, nor has growth begun to help fill in those holes. Being too cold and/or wet has prevented us from getting our normal routine of rolling started.Once it does warm up, the holes will actually benefit us, as the warmer air will more easily get into the root zone, warming the soils, and promoting growth.

• Unmown turf. The only thing we’ve mown is greens. Mowing turf in the situation that we’re in (soil temps below 50F), will break its dormancy. Tees, Approaches, and Fairways will be mown later, as we don’t necessarily want everything breaking dormancy at once. Specifically on greens, you’ll notice a slight difference in the aesthetics of greens that were covered, and the greens that were not (1,5,9,13,14). Greens that were not covered over winter are not as lush, and remain much more dormant. This difference will diminish quickly as the turf breaks dormancy naturally, and begins to grow.

6 Green – Covered

9 Green – Not Covered

 

• Damaged Poa on green expansions and select green areas. This damage is actually welcomed. The Poa is not dead, but damaged from the extreme cold temperature exposure over winter. There is a higher population of Poa on green expansions from the core aerification completed to remove the project sodding layer. We want to do everything we can to discourage the Poa from establishing, and starting off the season already damaged is a good thing, as we’ll now promote the Bentgrass to outcompete it in the turf stand.

• Cart signs in the approaches. To remind existing members, and to help new members, we will leave directional signs in the approaches, giving cart drivers a visual of where the cart boundary is, and what cart path to drive towards,  for a few weeks.

 

Here’s what you won’t experience during your first few rounds:

• Divot mix available in carts/push cart trolleys. Because it is so cold, divot mix will not germinate, and will more than likely perish from being wet and cold. Also, because road restrictions are still on, we cannot take delivery of sand/soil yet. Regardless, until things are actively growing, please replace your divots on Tees and Fairways, and step them down. This is the preferred method regardless! Divot mix will be added once soils are warm enough to germinate seed.

 

• Water bottle stations. Because the night time lows are below freezing, we will need to hold off installing the stations. Please get water before your round, and on your way to the back nine, inside of the clubhouse.

 

• Normal bunker raking maintenance from our staff. As we continue to clean up from winter, complete important on-going spring projects, start mowing fine turf areas, all with a smaller staff, we will not be raking bunkers on a regular basis. This means in order to keep the sand as playable as possible in between our staff fully raking, all players must properly rake themselves out of bunkers, and place the rakes in the corners. The presentation of the bunkers will be heavily influenced by the player’s self care in the group in front of you. Our maintenance intervals will increase as the season progresses.

We are excited the season is finally here, our staff has worked very hard, through some difficult weather, to get us to this point. We hope to see many of you out there!

Mike Manthey