It has certainly been a busy few weeks for the Agronomy Team.
The Dye Course has been closed since May
14th for its annual early summer aerifications and the Nicklaus has
been the only course open for play, making some of the routine maintenance
practices a little more challenging to accomplish so as to not disrupt
play. The weather has finally started to
turn in the right direction and will really begin to give us the temperatures
we need to get the turf to aggressively start growing and help with the
transition from cool season overseed back to our bermudagrass base.
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Aerifiying #5 fairway
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The Dye Course aerification is going very smoothly. All greens, tees, fairways, and areas of high
traffic have all been successfully aerified and cleaned up. The greens are transitioning well, even with
the cooler than normal spring temperatures, and should be back to normal within
the next couple of weeks. We have also delayed
the closing of the Nicklaus Course for aerification for a week to allow the
greens on the Dye to recover a bit more and be in better playing condition when
it opens back up on Saturday May 24th.
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Cleaning up #4 fairway – a little
dusty!
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While we refer to this closure as “aerification”, there are
a lot of other projects going on at the Dye that would not be possible if done
in play; Items such as the removal of the “stray zoysiagrass” in the fairways
and approaches, removal of the zoysiagrass encroachment in the greens collars,
and sodding of thin areas of centipede and high traffic areas. These projects are extremely disruptive and
labor intensive, requiring that we pull staff from regular routine activities
(raking bunkers, changing cup, and frequency of mowing) that are done on a
daily basis, to accomplish these large projects. These projects are all on schedule to be
completed by the time that the course opens back up but it hasn’t been an easy
feat to pull off, most of the staff worked close to 75 hours the first week of
the closure to complete the aerification process and then move on to these
projects.
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Between #1 & 9 before – ugly!
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| Between 1 & 9 in process |
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| Between 1 & 9 Finished Product - Much better! |
Here are a few quick numbers of the man hours and materials needed
to complete the aerification process and project:
- · Aerification required 592 man hours
- · Sodding of collars required 393 man hours
- · Sodding of high traffic and thin areas required 465 man hours
- · Sodding of stray zoysia in fairways and approaches 424 man hours
- · 122 pallets of grass for these projects
- · 150 tons of sand for topdressing and replacing soil in the greens collars
- 19,000 lbs. of fertilizer and soil amendments
As you can see from the numbers above we have been extremely
busy and being closed helps the efficiency of the projects immensely. Had these projects been done in play, we could
expect to add approximately 50% to these numbers, not only taking longer to
complete but the disruption to play and safety would be significant, almost
unbearable.
It will take a few weeks for the sod that has been laid to
become rooted and the heights lowered to normal playing heights. Please consider any sod that you may encounter
as GUR for the next few weeks. We could
paint each spot but that would look like a white line extravaganza. The rest of the course is coming along nicely
and will continue to recover from aerification as scheduled.
As you can see form the pictures, there has definitely been
a lot going on around the Dye Course during the past 8 days. As this is being written, we are still laying
sod on the collars and some of the areas in the fairways and approaches, and we
still need to mow all the rough, edge and rake all the bunkers to get the
course set up for play again. That’s all
got to happen in the next 48 hours!
Below are a series of pictures to give you an
idea of what these projects looked like before, during, and after.
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Spraying Roundup herbicide in
fairways to kill stray zoysiagrass
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#3 approach after round up
applications
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Cutting and removing stray zoysia
from #3 approach
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#2 approach in the removal process
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| #7 Drive On Before |
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| #7 Drive On Complete |
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| Removing the Zoysia encroached sod from the collars |
