A productive first week of June
The week started off with just over 100 tons of sand being spread around the greens on the Manakin. The sand will continue to help the latitude smooth out and fill in and it will let us continue to mow the roll off areas tight.
A few of the bumpier fairways were also topdressed to help smooth out the surface.
Our new fairway brush makes quick work of the topdressing sand.
We also made a big push this week with sod work. 30,000 square feet of turf was stripped up and replaced with new latitude sod. Over the past few weeks it has become painfully apparent that the majority of these areas that didn't wake up after the winter were not going to come to life. The cool spring may have aided with missing the "wake up" window but we have also had discussions with the pre-emergent manufacturer and expressed our discontent with what we have been dealt.
The company has agreed to reimburse us for a good amount of sod that has been going down. After 3 trucks of sod this week, we look to do two more next week and continue to watch things fill in under our feet with some decent bermuda weather.
Another major project for the week was dryjecting and aerating the greens on the Manakin Wednesday. The dryject was previously canceled for the Manakin due to pandemic. This week was also supposed to be Men's Invitational week and we were slated to pull small cores out of the greens the Monday after. So we put everything together and got a nice round of aeration in just prior to summer. Over 30 tons of sand was injected into the greens, all hauled by hand by our staff.
Small quarter inch cores were pulled out by our aerators and the crew blew off the resulting debris.
The greens were brushed and rolled and are more than suitable for play. These new channels will help us keep water moving through the greens profile and create more avenues for root growth and air exchange which keeps our bentgrass happy.
Our staff put on a show with all this work being done! We are lucky to have such a driven and productive team!