Spring Update

A few things to update everyone on:

• The putting green drainage installation will begin Monday May 19th. The green will be closed during the install, and we ask that you walk on the cart path to get to the first tee. Please use either chipping green to putt on while the putting green is closed. Thanks for your patience.

• It’s obviously been incredibly dry and windy with unusual temperature swings this Spring. That has delayed the normal growth pattern of the variety of turfgrasses throughout the property. This makes it even more frustrating when we literally have dozens of biotypes of each variety of turf. This results in certain areas within greens, tees, fairways, and roughs that are breaking dormancy and rooting at completely different rates. This limits our agronomics in gaining consistency and advancements. The combination of shallow rooting (delayed development) and the dry/hot spring, has resulted in us irrigating and hand watering much more than we’d like to. That accumulation of irrigation water also has a detrimental effect, given that Walsh Lake is a storm drain catch for the entire city of Lauderdale, and full of undesirables minerals that have a negative effect of the turf. Without natural rainfall to “flush” the soils, we experience a somewhat negative effect to the turf with the constant irrigating.

• The Fescues need Spring moisture to push their normal development. Without it, they will break dormancy at a snails pace. We do not have irrigation in these areas of the course so we cannot supplement to assist. However, we have discovered that we’ve had some uninvited guests infiltrate them. Last summer the Japanese Beetles laid their eggs in July, the grubs emerged in August, and fed on turfgrass roots until the ground froze. The driest of the Fescue areas (which do not have irrigation) went into winter extremely dry. The grubs damaged the roots of the Fescues so badly that unfortunately they did not survived the open Winter. This isn’t a turf-type issue. The beetles lay eggs everywhere throughout the property. But we have irrigation on the majority of our turf, so as we irrigated to offset the drought we experienced going into Winter, we were able to counterbalance the grub damage with enough recovery to survive. Starting next week you will see us reseeding these areas which are mainly on side hills, exposed crowns of features, and under trees wells. The picture below shows all three scenarios – left of 4 tee, under the tree right of 3 green, and the walkway to 5 tee.

Overall, the golf course is in great shape. Each Spring brings a different set of circumstances that we must adapt to. We cannot control the things that have the biggest impact on the course, which is the weather. Our staff is doing amazing work and have been hustling hard since the snow melted. We need a little cooperation from the weather and turf will start progressing more quickly, and we’ll hit our stride.

See you out there,

Mike Manthey