Dye Course Fairway Update August 2012

The Dye Course was closed from August 1^st – 17^th for its late summer aerification.  During this time, all of the greens, tees, and fairways were aerified as well as a number projects completed.   The greens were aerified using .400” hollow tines, and then cleaned and heavily topdressed, followed by brushing the sand in and have recovered quite well.  The tees were aerified using .625” hollow tines, then cleaned and have also recovered very nicely.  The process on the fairways was a little more in depth and disruptive to combat a slight thatch layer that has accumulated as a result of a few different factors.

 In 2007, we began painting the fairways in the winter as opposed to overseeding.  The results have been fantastic and have required no transition in the spring months.  The down side to this is that when we paint we are pushing the grass to green up and grow during periods of the year when it would normally be dormant and not producing any new growth and associated thatch.  Secondly, we have been gentle with our early summer aerifications the last few years on the Dye Course so that when the Nicklaus Course goes into its early summer aerifications and transition from Perennial Rye back to Bermuda grass that the Dye will be in excellent condition with only having one course opened for approximately a month.  These two factors have resulted in a larger accumulation of thatch than we would like to see below the canopy of the turf.  We used two methods to combat the issue during our most recent closure: aerifying and vertical mowing (verticutting).  Both of the practices can be disruptive to play, but we felt with having 17 days of closure that we would be able to minimize the exposure to the membership.

The process on the fairways was as follows:

1.       Mow the fairway in a circular pattern at .100” below our normal height of cut.

This allows us to mow the fairways in multiple directions that we normally do not mow.

2.       Aerify the fairways two times with .700” tines.

·         Normally would only go one direction.

3.       Use a drag mat to break the soil and thatch apart from each other.

·         This allows us to reincorporate the soil back into the canopy as sort of free topdressing helping to dilute the thatch layer.

4.       Vacuum the entire fairway to remove thatch plugs.

5.       Verticut  to bring up thatch from below the soil surface.

·         This will also stand up any grass that has developed a grain.

6.       Vacuum the fairway again to remove the thatch brought to the surface from the verticutting.

7.       Mow the fairway again in a circular pattern to remove the leaf blade that was fluffed up by the verticutting.

·         This helps with grain removal, some areas were stood up as much as 2”.

8.       Aerify the fairways with a .750” solid tine to a depth of 8-10”.

·         The fairways have been repeatedly aerified to a depth of 3-4” for the past 10 years and by doing this a pan layer is created at this depth, by going deeper than that depth we are able to drain excesses moisture into the lower soil profile.

9.       Lastly we fertilized heavily and watered to promote new growth and recovery.

Although the immediate visual results may look very disruptive, the long term benefits will significantly improve the overall playablity and health of the turf, as we have significantly impacted the amount of thatch in the profile and have created new channels to help the soils drain better and faster.  The fairways are growing in nicely and we continue to fertilize and monitor their recovery, playability should be back to normal within a few more weeks.