Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  Last week ended with some extreme heat, followed by a couple of dreamy days to start this week. It was the perfect time for the ice cream truck to stop by! I apologize for the terrible picture—I didn't realize how bad it was until now. Anytime we can get a couple of nights in the 60s during July, we view that as an absolute gift. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. We're back into the upper 90s for the next couple of days, along with some incredible humidity. Overall, everything is in decent shape for July. The greens are a little wetter than we would like, but the rain earlier in the week, soil spray applications that require a little overhead irrigation, and all of this humidity have kept them a little fat and swollen. Unfortunately, it seems like the last couple of soil spray applications have come due just as we've started getting some rainfall. It would be nice if those lined up with periods when the greens were drying down instead of getting wetter, but such is ...

 Well...Happy 4th! Summer has officially arrived! Temperatures climbed over 100 degrees this week...all of us are cranky and already talking about hunting season, fall vacations, and those first frosts. We wouldn't have it any other way. This dangerous heat was followed by some much-needed rainfall and, of course, extreme humidity. That's exactly what the Bermudagrass has been waiting for. While this weather is great for Bermuda, the next two to three weeks are survival mode for our bentgrass greens. One of the biggest tools we have at our disposal during this time of year is air movement. My phone this week was filled with pictures of fan components that were absolutely smoked by the intense lightning storms. Most of the fans on the golf course were damaged in some capacity, but the boys did a great job getting them back up and running in a hurry. Those fans become extremely important this time of year as we do everything we can to help the bentgrass survive the heat. Speaking...

 This week started with a helicopter on the range to lift new AC units onto the roof of the clubhouse. They wouldn't let us drive the helicopter, so we started prepping the golf course for battle this week. Scheduled fungicide, nutrient, and wetting agent applications were made on Monday to both golf courses to ensure all the necessary plant protectants were in place to get ready for what has proved to be a tough Fourth of July week. Today was absolutely brutal, but tomorrow has the potential to be straight-up dangerous. The heat index is forecast to be above 110 tomorrow. We will be babysitting bentgrass for the next couple of days. We pride ourselves on absolute top-level conditions, and very rarely do we give ourselves a pass on green speeds, but this week we're taking that pass. The name of the game this week is plant health and survivability. The greens early this week were as slow as they have been all year. When it gets this hot and humid, the plant gets puffy, fat, and ...