7-12-19
Golf
Maintenance FYI
·
The first week of our annual 3-week closure was challenging
at best. The first two days we were fortunate to miss the rains that circled us;
however, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday saw rain fall throughout the day. The
rain causes soft, wet conditions making it difficult to not only get out on the
golf course but to also clean up the plugs and verti-cutting material.
The rain has
created challenging conditions to clean up debris
·
Our lake levels are now above the high-water line of 14 feet.
This creates a saturated soil profile and causes our low areas to become very
soft creating a challenge for our equipment to pass through. Additional handwork
is needed which simply delays progress and impacts other planned projects.
The water
level is only inches below the basins causing saturated soil conditions
·
Compliments to my staff for working through the rain, heat
and humidity over the past week to accomplish as much as possible. Their work
ethic and dedication to Copperleaf are simply amazing and I can not think of a
greater compliment to have employees that want to work with me and get things
done. Thankyou to Char Swob for providing snacks and Gatorade to the team this
week. Also, a big thank-you to John and Helga Reynolds for providing pizza to
the staff this week. The staff were so thankful for the thoughtfulness and it
is these little things that encourage them to perform at their best.
A photo of the team with Char Swob
in the middle
·
David Forrey has been outstanding
again this week coordinating the cultural practices. He had to be extremely
creative to navigate around the golf course and identify the driest areas to
perform the work with the various pieces of equipment.
·
Over
the past week the following cultural practices have been completed:
o
All
greens verticut 6 times, aerified, top-dressed with sand, fertilized and dragged
o
All
fairways double verticut, vacuumed, aerified, dragged and fraze mowed
o
All
greens collars fraze mowed to eliminate the mounding around the collar
o
Practice
tee double verticut, vacuumed, aerified and fraze mowed
o
All
tees double verticut and vacuumed
·
I
can’t thank Ricardo Gomez and Raul Sanchez for coming in on Saturday, their day
off, to finish fraze mowing the fairways. Without their efforts we would not be
as far along for the upcoming week. I provided them each a $50 Amazon gift card
to reward their efforts.
Verticutting Greens
Greens aerification plugs
Aerial view of Hole 9 showing the Verticutting
process
Verticut Fairways
Vacuuming the Verticutting debris
·
The
amount of material generated is quite extraordinary with over 400 yards of
grass cuttings already being hauled off property.
Debris pile ready for pick up
·
Hopefully
the weather cooperates this coming week as we will be:
o
Aerifying
and topdressing with sand all Tees
o
Aerifying
and topdressing with sand all Greens again
o
Verticutting,
aerifying and topdressing all Approaches
o
Aerifying
all Rough
o
Aerifying
all fairways again
o
Topdressing
all fairways - will take several days to complete
·
These
cultural practices allow our turf to recover from another busy golfing season
and to prepare for increased golf play starting in October.
·
The
event hosted by Bayer last week was a great success. I was interviewed by
several industry journalists on our success here at Copperleaf. This culminated
in a site visit on Friday and a more in-depth interview on my own unique story
and especially regarding the use of female employees in golf maintenance.
·
Our
very own Tina Fry has been awarded a trip to North Carolina in September to recognize
women in the turf industry. She will be one of 30 attendees from the US and
Canada attending a 3-day conference. It is a credit to Tina and her hard work for
being accepted.
