{"id":3181,"date":"2024-07-29T05:52:21","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T11:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/?p=3181"},"modified":"2024-07-29T08:03:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-29T14:03:18","slug":"summer-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/?p=3181","title":{"rendered":"Summer things"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, congrats to everyone who played in the Raynor Cup, the flight winners, and our champs Jay and Lawrence. The staff had a fun start-in-the-dark morning to get everything prepared for the first shotgun.<\/p>\n

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I recently took out the drone to get a different perspective than my normal routine of evaluating via on foot. Most of the time I look at grassing lines, meaning how we mow Greens, Tees, Fairways. It’s a great way to see if we need to adjust anything that is hard to detect from the ground. A big part of Raynor architecture is that geometric-style presentation, which is hard to detect on our rolling topography. I also look at plant health, tee box to landing zone alignment, cart and mower traffic patterns, areas of the property that are saturated or dry, weak areas of turf that might be in need of food, tree health in wooded areas that are hard to see on the ground, as well as anything else that sticks out with a different perspective.<\/p>\n

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One of the biggest differences I noticed was how all of our normal cultural practices come together to promote plant health. Look at the driving range fairway and notice the difference in the look compared to 1 and 18 fairway. All of the cumulative work we’ve done on our fairways, from aerification, deep-tining, and topdressing have paid serious dividends. But we don’t have the time or resources to carry that management program to the driving range fairway. Most of the time, it takes every last minute to get the golf course completed during aerification, that the driving range doesn’t receive the same inputs. It doesn’t help that the driving range has a cart and ball picker driving over it daily to fetch balls, which creates constant compaction. That compaction is exacerabated because of the fact that all of 1 and 18 surface drains onto the driving range floor. The result is fairway that is predominantly Poa which strives in a saturated state, but at the same time, struggles to stay disease free.<\/p>\n

But it also creates an opportunity to figure out how to become more creative in our problem solving, look for solutions, and ways to implement improvements.<\/p>\n

Speaking of saturated, we’ve had plenty of it over the past 2 months. As I’ve stated before, that much moisture makes certain areas thicker than we want (Fescues) and certain areas thinner (Greens). Some greens have great surface drainage, which Raynor knew better than anyone. He took some risks to implement architecture. The 14th green is the perfect example. In order to create that amphitheater and drama of that green site, he knew that it would go against his knowledge of how important surface drainage is. Tens of thousands of gallons of water flows onto the Alps green in a downpour, but proper surface drainage on the green surface slowly sheds the water to the South. We can safely assume that this green was built incorrectly in 1920, when Raynor was not present, and it was destined to fail. It’s also safe to assume that is what led to the club rebuilding the green into the turtle back style in 1926, as the BOD minutes stated it wasn’t surviving winter. When we rebuilt that green in 2022, we shaped it properly to shed water off the surface, but also installed internal drainage, as the surrounding area seeps water down into the green’s subsoils constantly in a summer we’re experiencing. Without drainage, we wouldn’t have much for grass on it.<\/p>\n

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The putting green has a significant amount of surface area itself, 15,000 square feet to be exact. The surrounding areas – the first tee, the back of the range tee, the pavered area between it and the clubhouse all drain onto the green. The surface drainage of the green is excellent. But the subsoils have been saturated and full since the snow melted, which has led to the decline in the quality of turf on it. This is the difference that internal drainage makes. We can control water via irrigation, but we cannot control excessive water (rain fall) without internal drainage.<\/p>\n

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When it has been dry enough, we’ve been adding bunker sand where needed. Now that we have proper width in fairways to get balls off center, along with expanded greens that fill out their pads, it puts bunkers that are properly placed. The result is that they are collecting much more shots than before. Over the past 2 weeks, we’ve been adding over 100 tons of sand. Some bunkers only need an inch, while some need almost 4 inches. This process is very time consuming because of the manual labor involved in getting the sand spread throughout the bunker to the proper depths.<\/p>\n

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Once the bunker sand is installed, it is very soft and in need of compacting. This process is also very laborious, and difficult to do in play. The vibratory plate compacter is slow, heavy, and loud, so using it during play is not ideal. It also puts the staff in harms way, because they cannot hear anyone yell fore, while they’re focused on the task at hand. Thanks for your patience as we complete both of these processes.<\/p>\n

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Another large project we’ve been chipping away it, is replacing the landscaping in the parking lot islands. The plant material used was commercial, uninviting, and at the end of its life. The rock that was used as a ground cover was even less inviting, and the soil used inside of the islands is atrocious. The trees growing in the islands are 20 years old and have barely grown, which is a good indicator of what kind of growing conditions they’re trying to survive in.<\/p>\n

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Our team has been painstakingly removing the rock, which is mixed with dirt and roots, with pickaxes and shovels. We’ve then been attempting to amend the soils before adding new plants, and using mulch as a ground cover. Once matured, this will be a nice improvement to the welcome feeling as you enter\/exit the club.<\/p>\n

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Not only do we constantly pursue improvements to the golf course, but improving the curb appeal from the time you leave your vehicle, to the time you get back in, is a goal. It all adds up to the cumulative experience we strive to provide you and your guests.<\/p>\n

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See you out there,<\/p>\n

Mike Manthey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, congrats to everyone who played in the Raynor Cup, the flight winners, and our champs Jay and Lawrence. The staff had a fun start-in-the-dark morning to get everything prepared for the first shotgun. I recently took out the drone to get a different perspective than my normal routine of evaluating via on foot. Most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001003,"featured_media":3182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1,4,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mhccturf.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_6845.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4FBNE-Pj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"fimg_url":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_6845.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3181"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3203,"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3181\/revisions\/3203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mhccturf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}