Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

The hot weather is moving along our turf eradication this week. You can see around the trees that were sprayed last Friday that the turf is really starting to wilt. The Poa annua in the fairways is starting to feel funky already. Don't worry about the herbicide being close to the trees, as soon as it hits the soil, soil microbes break the material down long before the tree would take any up. The turf has taken up all the herbicide and has dried out nicely so that you can enjoy one last weekend on (dying) cool season turf on the Manakin. Starting Monday June 3rd the Manakin will be closed until its targeted opening date of September 24th. The bentgrass on the greens and the Latitude sod around the greens is glowing right now with the pleasant weather. The Latitude has come in beautifully and will be anxiously waiting for more of the same turf to be installed throughout the course in July. The Manakin greens have not been aerated in over a year. Next week we will break ...

A rock solid 13 hour day is in the books and the Manakin tees, fairways and rough have been covered with non selective herbicide. Here is the only picture taken from the day as we were all pushing hard to get the golf course covered. All of the trees were sprayed around with the hand gun and every edge where we already have Latitude sod around the greens was precisely sprayed with the gun. This allowed the larger sprayers to make their application quickly and accurately. You can see from some of the herbicide applied last Friday that around the trees the turf is starting to wilt. You can expect the rest of the golf course to start wilting and turning yellow as we enter the weekend. The herbicide dried quickly today and will be safe to play on this weekend. Finishing the application today is a relief and we are ready to push forward with some improvements before sprigging starts July 8th! Look for another update Thursday this week.

Here is the final reminder about the Manakin project. On this coming Tuesday, May 28th, non-selective herbicide will be applied to all the tees, rough and fairways. The greens, the bermuda sod around the greens and the zoysia around the bunkers will be left in place. Gone will be any cool season turf playing surface along with the weeds that have accompanied that turf for the past 15 years.  We have plenty of work to do as the current turf dies off and before the sprigging of new bermudagrass begins on July 8th. One of the larger items on the list is creating new tee boxes that are on the Master Plan. We got a jump start on the tee box construction here on 18 this week. This new box splits the difference between the forward tee and the white tee. These new boxes will give us much more flexibility in how to play the course when it reopens. We have a long list of projects to accomplish over the next few weeks, the excitement is just beginning. You will see some...

There is lots of current info below. If you have not reviewed the Manakin re-grass Powerpoint on the front page of the Blog, please do so. The video from the info session is also on the Facebook page. The Manakin project begins May 28th! This week will not end how it started. Some very cool temperatures got us started in the mornings early in the week. The rains over the weekend helped the turf charge through the temps however and turf growth has been impressive this week. The Sabot greens are putting well and are about 96% filled in. A cool start to the week gave us a chance to engage some practices that help improve the texture of the greens surfaces. The greens on the Manakin were lightly verticut and then mowed up one direction and back down the same direction. The brushes were down in front of the mowers so the bentgrass was standing up nicely before it was mowed. Remember that although we are changing out the turf on the majority of the Manakin, the greens are not goi...

This week we started to harvest sod from the Manakin and install it on the Sabot. Last year some of the tees on the Manakin suffered winter kill and were replaced with Northbridge bermudagrass. That turf is acceptable but will not match up exactly to the new Latitude being installed this summer. Over the next 3 weeks we will make the best use of this turf over on the Sabot.  The first spot we picked to install the sod from 16 Manakin was here around the collar on 7 Sabot. This collar consisted of thin ryegrass and not much bermudagrass. The old sod was stripped and the new sod was laid down smoothly right behind. The tee to the right of the cart path on 7 Sabot was also patched up and will be put back into play shortly. In addition to the Northbridge sod from the Manakin we will also be looking to steal some of the older bermuda off the tees in order to patch some voids in the rough on the Sabot. We will be out with some sort of sod crew very frequently over the nex...

With the new website coming online, we can also introduce the guidelines for caring for the Golf Course. These guidelines are simple and help protect the clubs greatest asset, the Golf Course. Playability and health of the Course, along with player satisfaction, are top priorities of the Golf Course Management Department. We kindly ask that players take part in repairing their own damage on the Golf Course as per the guidelines below. Please also brief your guests of these guidelines prior to you round. Keep your cart on the path as much as possible. When possible, enter the fairway at a 90-degree angle heading toward your ball position. Cart traffic should be scattered through fresh turf areas and rarely concentrated into a single path. This includes pinch points on fairways as well as entry and exit points from the cart path. Carts are allowed to travel in the rough and on the fairways, scattering their traffic paths. Steep mounds and tall grassed naturalized areas must be avoi...