Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  It was great to have a group of about 20 members out last night for our Maintenance Facility tour. It took us just over an hour to walk a circle around our storage and operations areas. I am not sure anyone expected to find over 180 different pieces of equipment and talk about thousands of an inch for mowing heights as well as millions of gallons of water that goes through our irrigation system. It was an informative evening for sure. Thanks to David Norman for the pictures. We finished the tour just after 6pm and Dunstano and Carlos, our two equipment mechanics were ready to feed the group with their tacos. There weren't many people that did not come back for seconds! These two are all stars and they proved it again last night! We continue to move forward with our spring sodding projects. Last year we were slated to strip and re-sod the collars on the Sabot but due to covid we pushed the project off. This week we got the project started. The existing collars were a mix of ryegra...

  Frost and 34 degrees is not what we need for bermuda growth, or even bentgrass growth for that matter. Another light frost is expected tonight so we will just look forward to the thermometer hitting 80 next week and see if spring can try to start again. You can see some remnants of winter out on the Manakin in the form of large patches. This is a fungus called.......Large patch. It develops in the fall and through the winter and is due to excessive moisture and thatch, two things the Latitude had plenty of over the last 6 months. It is more or less just superficial on bermudagrass. Once the temps get moving the bermuda will grow right out of the patch. So the bermuda isn't growing but we are allowing the grass range tee to be used Thursday through Sunday. New signs are out encouraging linear divots. A linear divot pattern can reduce the area impacted by 65%. Considering our range tee is about 33% of the size it needs to be, we need all the help we can get in salvaging turf here. ...

  It is early spring and your Poa annua on the Sabot is seeding out like crazy. The Poa is there because of the commitment to grow bluegrass on the fairways (and tees). The idea behind "bluemuda" is that there is a never a transition from cool season (bluegrass) to warm season (bermuda). The bluegrass and bermuda grow together well and are not antagonistic like bermuda and rye are. Ideally the bluegrass should come back each fall once the bermuda goes dormant. Last fall, not knowing if the blue would come back or not, we added more bluegrass seed to the fairways. Because of this, no pre-emergent was applied in the fall. No pre-emergent means Poa annua will germinate if the blue doesn't provide enough cover.  Well, the new bluegrass seed did approximately 0 thanks to an un-invasive seeding process. If we had scalped the fairways down and re-seeded, we would have never known what older bluegrass was going to come back. That combined with massive amounts of golf play and mak...

  After freezing temperatures and more rain last week, this week could not have been more perfect. The latitude on the Manakin got stung by the frost last weekend but as we laid down the first cut on Wednesday, it was easy to see it pushing forward with green up. With the first fertilizer application going down this week as well on the latitude, you should continue to see some progression. The new black tee on 9 dried out nicely over the last weekend so we were able to tackle the new feature with sod.  Latitude bermudagrass covers the top of the tee and fescue leads down to the existing native area. As we have discussed before, all of our current tee renovations are part of the Master Plan. 2 years ago as part of the Manakin re-grassing we were able to build 15 new tees to accommodate a wide variety of golfers. Last fall, the projects on 9, 11 and 18 Sabot were reviewed with the Green Committee and deemed priority for this season. We continually discuss improvements with our a...

  The rain has continued to make finishing off Sabot 9 black tee difficult. Either our new soiled area was soaked or the sod farm was soaked. We managed to get the tee surface sodded this week and are aiming to get another load of latitude and tall fescue in on Monday to finish up. We moved on to drier areas with the sod prep however since the sod farm was able to squeeze out 10,000 square feet of latitude. The team spend plenty of time prepping the area behind 18 Sabot green and removed the 3 maple trees from around the putting green and chipping fairway. The area is now much more open and will supply more room to practice as well as sunlight to grow a quality surface. Over on the Manakin the area between 5 green and 6 tee was prepped out and new pavers were placed under the water cooler. With the oak tree and random hedge row gone we will be able to bring the fairway cut down towards 6 tee and grow some grass back here. The drains on 1 Manakin were polished off finally with some ...