- Should I replace a divot with turf or fill it in with sand? The preferred way, is if the divot is still intact to place back into the hole where formed, if that is not possible because it is in many pieces then sand would be the second choice. Watch a PGA Tour event and see what the caddie does!
- . Can you explain why we don’t use seed in our sand mix to reduce the time for divots to repair? We actually do have seed in our mix at the present time, we are working out the logistics for the divot bottles on the carts. Because we do not fill them (bag staff does) we want to make sure that when we do roll that out we do not falter. So we will build a divot box for them this winter and create the mix for them to use.
- Why is the sand at the bottom of the bunkers still wet after renovation? I can’t really comment on this other than it was wet before, some bunkers drain faster than others. Not every bunker will be consistent which is why we dig our heals in to test out the firmness before we hit our shot. It has been wet year and could be why we see this in a some areas.
- Could you explain/demonstrate the correct method for repairing ball marks on the green? I can and I do have a video on the blog that explains this, in the blog it is located in the Labels section under ball mark repair.
- Does being Audubon certified mean that we don’t use fertilizers on the course? No, we do use fertilizers and we use them appropriately for the turf grass that we have.
- How often does your staff seed troubled areas (approach shots/tee boxes)? Because we just started to introduce seed into the our mix we have really just started. If I can take a moment to explain why we didn't seed it would make more sense. We did not use bent grass seed because the seed is very small and easily capable of contaminating our roughs. Some people fill divots in the rough and we couldn't keep that from happening. So we did not use seed until a friend of mine tried a different seed that works kind of like a cover crop until the bent grass can fill in. I have seen first hand what contaminated rough looks like and it can be extremely difficult to hit out of. By eliminating bent grass seed we can eliminate that avenue from happening.
- How do you decide what areas to focus resources on?
a.
It
seems like we spend a lot of resources (time/money) replacing sod on the fringes
of the course (off tee boxes, or cart paths that aren't necessarily in play) to
enhance the look of the course, while areas of the course that get a lot of
play (where approach shots are taken or par 3 tee boxes) are left unattended. Everything gets tended to but just in different ways, we
receive a lot of traffic in the rough and we deal with this by sodding or
seeding. Others areas like Tee boxes we utilize fertilizer to grow back in
along with seed. Approach shots that are heavily used will be remedied by
the seeding protocol that we have implemented.
