September 12th will be the start of fall greens aerification. This will be our third of four aerifications for the year. Following the greens will be tee and a few fairway aerifications. Course will be closed to play on September 13th to complete this work and will re-open on the 14th.
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| Readying the fleet |
The Rest of The Story
While the course conditions for the Labor Day Classic were near perfect, 7 green was going through a challenge due to a mainline break just days before the tournament. This created a water deficit on the green in spite of our watering by hand. The fix won't be quick or simple as the line broke directly underneath a mature Sycamore tree near the green. It will call for abandoning the line.
Over the day, the heat and dryness won out and the green became unreceptive to even the greatest of our Tuscarora players.
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| Worst spot for a break |
On the whole, the condition of the course was great. It was a good challenge and nobody lost a limb in the end. As scores indicated, as they always do, the best shotmakers who adapted to conditions won the day.
Disease
Of the many nice things about Tuscarora is how well it drains. It's a boon for the property in rainy times, though, this summer showed how much of a bane it can be as well. The grasses in the fairways are a selection of coarse species. We have a little bit of everything that I call a "Heinz 57" mix. In comparison, courses like Bellevue, Turning Stone, or Lakeshore have a smoother mix composed of creeping bentgrass. We consider bentgrass a weed at Tuscarora by virtue of having nearly none of it in the fairways. It sticks out and looks like it doesn't belong.
Within our Heinz 57 mix are several types of weaker grass that succumb to disease pressure, as we saw over the last two weeks on parts of 3 fairway and 8 fairway. These worn out areas will be overseeded in the coming week.
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| untreated 3 Fairway on the mend |
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| untreated 17 fairway not a scratch |
We do treat our wettest fairways with fungicides based on their history of disease susceptibility, but never have budgeted a complete program that covers all fairways as the majority are tough enough to make it through our summer without a problem.
This is changing.
We're seeing a higher incidence of disease outbreaks over the last 10 years. We'll be revisiting establishing a fairway fungicide program to address future warming weather trends. This keeps the course moving forward and help the fairways stay in top condition all year. This will also help protect against mounting stresses from increased rounds and cart traffic. Beyond that, it will increase overall quality and aesthetics of our fairways which compliments the condition of the rest of the course. We're also be looking at reinstituting our annual overseeding program that was such a success from years ago. We're pricing seeders and will have a better idea what direction we'll head on that by 2017.
Out of Range
The USGA recommends a range tee size of 1 acre (43,560 square feet) for an average 18 hole golf club in the Northeast. Tees smaller than this need to reduce usage by using mats.
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| Cartpaths are for other people |
Our range tee is 8,000 square feet - that's small for what's being asked of it. We hit off grass 4 days of the week and overseed the worn areas twice a week. We'll be looking at how to improve the speed of recovery this fall. It may come to resodding the whole tee to a more resilient species like we see with the success of the new 18th tee. That tee was sodded to a very hardy dwarf Kentucky Bluegrass that seems to recover very quickly. Two other clubs currently do this now - Lakeshore and Calvary. It's expensive, but it's a solution.
Here's a blurb on tees from the USGA. Nothing we don't know, but good info on everything except how to acquire cheap land near the club.
http://gsrpdf.lib.msu.edu/ticpdf.py?file=/2000s/2005/050712.pdf
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