#3 Green Growing in Nicely

Just wanted to keep everyone updated on the new #3 green and show you how well it is growing in. We will have to do some small reseeding this fall and some next spring on some thin areas, but overall, it is growing in wonderfully. I mowed it for the first time on Tuesday, which will help the bent grass to start creeping out rather than growing more vertically. The picture is from the following day. Hope everyone has enjoyed the cooler weather these past few days, though we would rather take some rain. The Governor's Open is this weekend, and the crew has been working hard to keep the turf alive and trying to finish up on some detail work. Hope you all can get out and support this great tournament and watch some of the great amatuer players from all over the Kentucky and the surrounding states. We'll see you on the course.

USGA Article

Summer Heat Wave Facts
By Patrick O’Brien and Chris Hartwiger, Agronomists, Southeast Region
August 11, 2010

The summer of 2010 will be long remembered for its impact on bentgrass putting greens in the Southeast Region.
This summer produced many historical records for heat in the Southeast Region, and the result has been a nightmare for many bentgrass putting greens. The sad news is that probably another month of high temperatures is still ahead of us before cooler temperatures arrive.

Weather data compiled from the Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network (www.georgiaweather.net) at the Atlanta Athletic Club, near Duluth, GA, reveals information that testifies to the extreme heat in the Southeast Region this summer. Mr. Ken Magnum, Director of Golf Course and Grounds at the Atlanta Athletic Club, passed along this information to our office earlier this week.

From June 8th to August 8th, a total of 645 hours had temperatures above 90 degrees. The average number of hours above 90 degrees over the past 12 years has been about 233. This is an increase of about 275% from the average. Even after sunset on many days, temperatures remained above 90 degrees and provided no time for the soil to cool down.

Hours 90 Degrees or Higher -Last 60 Days:

8-Jun 8-Aug Total

2010 2010 645
2009 2009 139
2008 2008 213
2007 2007 238
2006 2006 571
2005 2005 84
2004 2004 66
2003 2003 8
2002 2002 231
2001 2001 8
2000 2000 248
1999 1999 347

This extended heat wave created an almost impossible situation at most golf courses, making it very difficult for superintendents to manage their bentgrass putting greens. Additionally, many golf courses were faced with operational budget cuts again this year. Fighting the heat with fewer fungicides, equipment, and labor at these courses further added to the challenge.

Last week, the Carolinas GCSA conducted a special 48-hour survey of superintendents managing bentgrass and found the following:

•A full 84 percent say their greens are “thinning” or “severely stressed” right now
•Nearly 30 percent have had to close greens or expect to do so soon because of heat stress
•Less than a third of superintendents say they are “optimistic” about nursing their greens through the end of summer
•95 percent describe this summer as “the worst” or “one of the worst” they have ever seen for managing bentgrass.

If your golf course has bentgrass putting greens that have declined, you are not alone. Superintendents are poised to do everything possible to restore the health of their bentgrass putting greens when temperatures cool down again this fall.

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.