Storm Damage 7-10-14

On 7-10-14 we had a bad storm come through and cause a little damage. We had our normal washouts from the heavy rain but we also had a lot of lightning damage. We had 4 trees get struck on hole #18 alone. On one of these trees the electricity went into the ground and blew a hole in the mainline irrigation pipe that was about 10 feet away. Sometimes trees can take a lightning strike and live and sometimes they will not, so we will just have to wait and see what happens to these. Here are a few pictures of the trees and the irrigation repair.

 

Red, White, and Boom celebration

Every July 4th Great Waters is the host for the annual Red, White, and Boom celebration at Reynolds Plantation. We have a band, bounce houses for the kids, tons of food, and the night is capped off with fireworks. A lot of hard work and time goes into planning an event like this and our department only does a small portion. We have to rope off everything to keep people far enough away from the fireworks and to keep people from playing on the greens. We also assist with the massive clean up that takes place that night and the next day.

These last few pictures show what aerosol cans can do to turfgrass. I have seen both spray sunscreen and bug spray cause this. Since this event was in the late evening I would imagine that these were from bug spray and not sunscreen. These areas usually heal up within a week but they are unsightly during that time. In the first picture you can see the footprints perfectly.

Greens are healing up

We are just over 1 week since our 5/8" aerification and the greens are looking really good. Hopefully by the end of next week we will not be looking at anymore holes and greens will be rolling smooth again.

Below is a picture from Monday of this week (6-23-14). 6 days from aerification.

And here are 2 pictures from today (Friday 6-27-14). 10 days from aerification.

And here is a great view from #9 fairway.

5/8" Aerification

We had a very busy week last week. We double back track verticut greens (2-8) & (4-10), topdressed heavy, aerified greens with 5/8" core tines with core harvesters attachments on, brushed greens with the sweep and fill brush in circles 2 different directions, rolled with the salsco's, the put out a few amendments. We also aerified and verticut all tees. On fairways we spot aerified weak areas and double verticut all fairways and perimeters. We were only scheduled to be closed on Tuesday and Wednesday last week and we felt like this was a lot to get done in only 2 days so we stayed late on Monday and got started behind the last group of golfers that evening. On Monday we: completely finished all practice greens, got almost all greens vericut, 10-14 greens and tees aerified, and 10-15 fairways verticut. We stayed until about 9 PM that night to get all of that done. This was a huge help and we were able to finish everything up on Tuesday. This way we were able to get a few mowings on everything and get everything blown off on Wednesday. Here are a few pictures of the different processes.

Resodding pro tee on #7

This week we stripped and resodded the pro tee on #7. This tee is only used a few times a year. Mainly during the Linger Longer Invitational and this year they will be using it during the Big Break Invitational. This tee is tucked way back in a shaded area and always struggled. We changed it from 419 over to TifGrand.

Article about televised tournaments

The USGA sends out frequent emails on everything related to golf course management, tournament golf, and golf in general. These emails usually have 5-6 articles each and almost always I find that at least one is very interesting or fitting to something that we are going through.  My last email from the USGA was no different. There was an article about the preparation and sheer number of people that go into getting ready for a televised tournament. It does not go into any agronomic practices because they can range so widely from course to course and from tournament to tournament, but it does do a good job of talking about the magnitude that a televised tournament brings with it. Below is a link to the article.


http://gsr.lib.msu.edu/article/moeller-real-5-30-14.pdf

Big Break Invitational at Reynolds Plantation

It was announced last week that the Golf Channel series The Big Break will be having an Invitational tournament this fall and that it will be held at Reynolds Plantation. It was also announced to our members that Great Waters will be the host course. This is very exciting for myself and my crew. The tournament will be the first of its kind. It will be a 4 day tournament all airing live on the Golf Channel and rebroadcast in primetime everyday. The tournament dates are September 30th-October 3rd. A few weeks ago Matt Ginella from the golf channel was here shooting a segment for Ginella's journeys that was shown on the morning drive. The segment was used to lead into the tournament announcement. I had to wait to post these pictures until it aired on the golf channel, but here are a few behind the scenes shots from that video shoot.

We have already been working hard preparing for this tournament and over the next few months we will have a lot more to do.  Anytime we do something related to The Big Break Invitational set up or any agronomic things done specifically for the tournament I will try to post them. Below are links to the announcement on Morning Drive last week and a link to the Ginella's Journey segment filmed at Reynolds Plantation.

The announcement on Golf Channel can be seen at the following link: http://www.golfchannel.com/media/morning-drive-tommy-gainey-excited-big-break-invitational/

 

A special segment profiling Reynolds Plantation, hosted by Golf Channel’s Matt Ginella, can be seen at the following link:

http://www.golfchannel.com/media/morning-drive-matt-ginella-visits-reynolds-plantation/

 

 

 

Verticutting Greens 5-20-14

On Tuesday of this week we were able to get out a veticut greens. Our process this time went as follows:
Verticut one direction (but up and back on the same pass, so really like 2 directions)
Walk mow greens with brush attachment on
Topdress light to medium
Brush with sweep and fill brush
I am attaching a short video of then entire process.

 

 

Resodding #2 tee on hole #2

A few weeks ago we resodded the #3 tee on hole #2 and we reopened that tee last week. Once we got that tee opened up we decided it was time to take a look at the #2 tee. We stripped the entire tee and part of the tee surround. We also added a lot of tee mix as fill because this tee has always held water between the tee top and the cart path. We used rolls of Zeon zoysia for the tee top and squares of Tifgrand bermuda for the surround. Both of these grasses have good shade tolerance and stand up to traffic well. Here are some pictures of the whole process.

Day 1 of Member-Guest

The first match of the Member-Guest tournament was delayed until 11:15 this morning. We got almost 4" of rain on the golf course lastnight. Bunkers washed pretty bad and lots of pinestraw and mulch was washed out. We spent all morning mowing greens, pushing up bunkers, and cleaning up the washouts. Our crew really worked hard and compared to what it looked like at 5:30 AM the golf course looked pretty good.