Verticutting For A Smooth Surface

We have completed another verticutting of our greens.  This is the 4th time this spring.  We have raised the cutting blades each time.  Now we are barely touching the surface.  The purpose of this is to keep the runners the bentgrass creates and stand up the grass for a cleaner cut.  Here you can see a close up of the grass standing up.  We probably will do this one more time before the heat of the summer.  this is part of our attempts to have healthy, dense greens that roll consistently, without extremely low mowing heights.

Cart Path Only...But It's Not Wet...Are You Crazy?

This past week a situation arose, where we were cartpath only, but it was not wet.  Why?  In this instance we were spraying the herbicide REVOLVER on Newport fairways.  Revolver is applied at a rate of 8 oz per acre.  Revolver is selective in that it KILLS ALL COOL SEASON GRASSES.  So if a golf cart were to track it into the rough, it could be unsightly.  I started spraying at 6 am, so foot traffic was not an issue.  There are other instances where we make applications for example Seaside fairways, we apply a penetrating surfactant to move water before or after rain events.  We have to water the product in to activate it, so the course may be wet, but you see sprinklers running.

More about the second year of  Revolver.  When we made the commitment to have bermudagrass be our primary grass on Newport fairways, the poa annua and ryegrass had to be cleaned up.  Revolver tragets the cool season turf, but is safe on the bermudagrass.  The result is less competition for the bermuda and allowing it to spread and become a great playing surface.  We have slowly been creeping the edges out on Newport.  The goal is to eventually have total bermudagrass fairways and a nice clean line along the rough edge.  The picture above clearly shows how far we have come on #5 Newport.  We will be slit seeding bermudagrass into these areas in early June.  Hopefully the increased sunlight from the selective tree removal will pay off. 

There always is a legitimate explaination for our crazy world of turf management.

USGA Visit

Last Monday, we had Darin Bevard from the USGA on property for his annual visit.  We toured both golf courses.  We wanted to continue to solicit the USGA's input as to the direction we are taking the golf courses.  He had favorable comments on the bermudagrass progress.  We shall continue with our applications, continuing to expand the bermuda areas slowly.  The tree removal was positively reviewed and we anticipate even better fairway conditions this season.  We reviewed our greens programs and looked at our root systems.  Both golf courses had exceptional root systems, which is great going into the summer season.  Darin really liked our greens expansion on Seaside and commented he could not believe it turned out as well as it did.  He also liked the larger collars giving us two distinctive looks.  We reviewed suggestions to improve the weak fairways on Newport and looked ahead to improving conditions in our roughs.  It was an excellent review!