Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Course Update

With just one week to go, we are gearing up for our planned greens aerification on August 11th. The greens have over come some harsh climates during the most recent golf events with some thinness on our high traffic areas. Did you know that we received almost 3 inches of rain during the Member-Guest and Maryland Open in a 6 day stretch? And that the bunkers were a true testament to the brand we want Lakewood to be known for, with minimal repair to show case your course?  Although the greens roll very well the appearance is much to be desired for. This has been remedied by applying fertilizer to help the plant recover. It is true that this has been like this for a couple of weeks and we have been spoon feeding small amounts of nitrogen to alleviate the problem. But at the end of the day a well designed granular fertilizer application will kick them in the butt and on the road to recovery. We wanted to plan the application closer to our greens aerifiaction to decrease the time it takes to heal.  Not only will the greens be looking great at the end of this week but this will also help our recovery time after we pull a core and top dress next week on August 11th ,and yes we will be using small tines this go around. 

An example of thinning areas like this pictured.


The bermuda has been on roller coaster of suppression on the fairways and tees and we will continue to weaken it for the winter and will see the outcome next year.





There are some new club washers at the short game, these are very simple to use and only require you to dip your club in, they are a little tight but will break themselves in over time. The main thing is to stream line that process for your pleasure.




We have repaired the bridge traffic area on #7 near the green, this area receives a lot of traffic and actually began to dig itself a hole. We had already completed this on the opposite side of the bridge and just continued the theme.


Before

After