Summer Struggles

I was very pleased with the course conditions for the Juniper, even though we have been going thru one of the hottest two months in history. We have been struggling with the tees this year as had break through from our pre-emergent and resodding some of the bunkers. We are working very hard in trying to clean the tees up and overseed as much as we can. I have talked to other Superintendents in the area as well as in Louisville and we are all dealing with the same issues due to the heat. Everyone has their own struggles with crab grass and yellow nutsedge. I have sprayed the green banks with a herbicide to clean up the nutsedge and it seems to be working great. I went out and did one pass around all the greens 2 weeks ago and did another pass off of the previous one yesterday. We have also done two applications to clean the tees up from nutsedge. The crabgrass has been a different story. It is a weed that just won't go away this year. I sprayed for it once and it did more damage to the tees than I was hoping for. When you have heat like we have, you are playing a fine line between trying to keep the turf alive by watering so much and at the same time trying not to give disease the conditions it needs to surface, like wet wilt and brown patch. We are still fighting the good fight and hopefully fall is just around the corner. Congrats to the winners in the Juniper and we look forward to having you all again next year. We'll see you on the course.

Videos of #3 green

Just wanted to give you all a couple of videos of #3. The green itself has started growing. Still a little thin, but with a watchful eye, and a little fertilizer, we will be ready for spring time. Hope everyone is staying cool and hydrated during these past hot summer days.

We'll see you on the course!

The Heat is On, Roud 2!!

As many of you have noticed and felt, the heat has been overwhelming the past couple of weeks. Temperatures are reaching upper 90's with the heat index above 100 degrees. I received an article talking about the heat and the conditions it is causing from Golf Journal. Here is a piece from the article:

The U.S. Golf Association last week issued a special "turf-loss advisory" to courses in the Mid-Atlantic states, urgently advising greenkeepers to institute "defensive maintenance and management programs" until the weather crisis ends. Most of the danger is to greens planted in creeping bentgrass and annual bluegrass (also known as poa annua). "Physiologically, these are cool-season grasses that do very well when the air temperature is 60 to 75 degrees," said Clark Throssell, director of research for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. "They can cope with a few days of 90-degree weather every summer, but when that kind of heat lasts for days at a time, they have extreme difficulty."

A lot of courses are closing for a few days each week, and in Louisville, two courses are shutting down for 3 weeks just to let the course recover. Another part in the article is stating how some top courses are doing the same:

Huntingdon Valley Country Club outside Philadelphia, which dates from 1897, shut two of its three nines two weeks ago because of serious turf disease caused by the hot, wet weather. The Philadelphia area in July had 17 days of 90-degree-plus weather, six more than average, mixed with flooding thunderstorms of up to 4 inches. Members at the Golf Club at Cuscowilla, east of Atlanta, received letters this week that the club's highly regarded Ben Crenshaw-Bill Coore course would be closed for eight to 10 weeks so that the wilted greens can be completely replanted. The Ansley Golf Club broke similar news to members about the club's in-town Atlanta course. "The continued, excessive heat and humidity have put our greens into a critical situation and the possibility of saving many of them is remote," said a letter from the grounds-committee chairman. Even Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y., the site of five U.S. Opens, is having serious weather-related problems with its turf.

Juniper Hill is struggling just the same but we are doing what we can to keep the turf cool during these stressful times. Please bare with us as we are all in the same boat. Everyone who is playing during these high temperatures, please stay hydrated. Please be aware of where you drive you cart, the more you stay on the path (even in this weather with high temperatures) the better the turf will be.

Before and After

I just wanted to show everyone the before and after pictures of the new #3 green complex. We worked on it for about 2 weeks due to the weather slowing thing down, but even just that short of time, it's hard to visualize what it looked like. So here are the before and after shots. Thanks again for all the kind words and encouragement we got during this process. I was hoping it would be good for Govenor's Open, but like most of you have said, rather have it great for spring than rough. We'll see you on the course.

#3 Completed!

As of Monday afternoon, the new #3 green complex is completed. Sand is in the bunkers, the sod has been laid around the green, we seeded everything outside the sod line, and the green itself has been seeded. It is a great new look for Juniper Hill, and I think everyone will enjoy it. I was really hoping to have it available for play during the Governor's Open, but Mother Nature had other ideas. On the good side, it will give us the is fall to let the area mature and be ready for play come spring time. The pictures above show the finished product.