Taking advantage of a bad break...

This is the bunker covered in mud and clay, early Sunday morning.

A few hours later, our staff had collected all of the sand off of the bunker slopes and floor ready to be hauled away.

Those of you that played in the Men's Opening day on Saturday would are already be aware of the irrigation leak that washed out the greenside bunker on #15. Luckily (for me) I was not off the property at the time that a member noticed the break, I was able to isolate the green and stop the damage before it got out of hand. Unfortunately the broken pipe was directly on the top of the bunker bank on #15. The bunker was completely contaminated and washed right down to the clay base. The drainage was also contaminated with mud and clay. It is no secret that most of our members are not satisfied with our bunkers here at HCC. The Green Committee is looking at some current methods of renovation to solve the issues with drainage and the high lips that our bunkers currently have. We are going to take advantage of an unfortunate incident (the irrigation break) and renovate the bunkers on #15. Realizing the right bunker is to be rebuilt now anyways, it only makes sense to use this oppurtunity as a test plot. The irrigation break is now fixed and we have begun to remove the bunker sand and will then continue onto restructuring the lips and installing new drainage. Weather is always a determining factor with spring projects, but we hope to complete this one in rather quick fashion.

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The Practice Range Tee

Last fall we utilized a “new to us” method of revitilization for our practice tee. Our contractor TDS, fraize mowed the surface of the tee to remove organic matter as well at to aid in leveling. The tee was then aerified and seeded to a new variety of creeping rye grass. We chose this type of turf grass as research shows rapid recovery and a low growth habit. We were able to get some great growth in the fall, but the tee is still not ready for traffic and full use. The plan is to utilize the mats until growth has filled in some of the voids etc. We will then begin to slowly set up hitting areas on the grass tee. For a while we will alternate between grass and the mats with a 50/50 ratio of use. Once the grass tee is established and is in adequate recovery mode, the practice areas will be back to normal. As always our membership’s patience is appreciated as we try to improve these areas for use.

Venting Greens...

This week we will be venting our greens with needle tines. These tines make a hole that is less than an 1/8th of inch. With our greens being completely saturated from the incredible amount of rain that we have recieved this season, there is no room for air movement in the soil. We need to create very small channels for air movement to the root zone. When roots don't have air, they die. This has not been evident yet, but with the warmer temperatures of July upon us soon, trouble could be lurking. This will be a very non-disruptive process to our members and play. We are going to vent all of our greens over then next few days early in the morning as to not disrupt play. The process is simple, we vent the green using the aerifier and needle tines, roll them smooth and then mow the green. The holes virtually dissapear and are of no effect to roll. I realize that the word aerifier starts to scare people, but this is necessary and again is very clean and non-disruptive. Check out the pic...

Spring Greens Aeration...a week later!

A week has passed since our annual spring greens aeration. We have had a mixed bag of weather, hot, dry, cold, wet and even frost! These conditions make it challenging to aid in healing, but with the more recent consistent warm temperatures we are seeing solid recovery. We were fortunate to have decent weather to complete the process on time, allowing us to fill all the holes created by the 1/2” hollow tines. As there are some minor depressions within some of the holes we will be beginning our bi-weekly topdressing program early next week. Our team is mowing and rolling our greens daily, while slowly lowering our height of cut to our summer norm. We all know that spring cultural practices are not popular among golfers, but these all important tasks are the building blocks for high performance greens conditions throughout the heart of the golf season. Check out this video produced by the USGA on Aerations effect on putting...

HIGHLAND CC GROUNDS

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