Wet and hot!

 

Two heavy thunderstorms last weekend soaked us down nicely and the bermuda is back to loving life after the tenth driest July on record. On Monday we brought the small verticutter back out to the Manakin and removed a large amount of material from the approaches. We topdressed right up to the edge of the green and brushed in the sand. This process will help the Latitude not get so puffy as we work through the second half of summer.

The sand worked in nicely and a dry cut was applied afterwards. The bermuda has greened right back up and will play great for the weekend.

We are mid-summer on bentgrass greens so its easy to hear comments about ballmarks. We always try to find a way to manage golfer expectations. Last month on the Manakin we saw almost 3,000 rounds of golf. At one point or the other 3,000 balls hit every green. Now just imagine yourself laying out in the hot sun and 3,000 golf balls are hit at you. Yes, the balls are going to make a mark. Yes, we need you to find and fix your mark correctly. No, there is no magic answer that is going to eliminate the fact that a golf ball is going to bruise and even kill bentgrass in mid-summer when heat, humidity and moisture levels are high. Once we get towards the end of August (Sabot aeration is the 22nd) we'll be able to get back to regular topdressing and see some faster recovery. Until then, find and fix your mark and hope it recovers!

Mother Nature is angry in the summer. This big pine on 13 Sabot got struck by lightning last Friday. The lightning fried our surge protector in the irrigation box on 13 and was making the entire back nine circuit trip. The surge pill was an easy fix but this pine tree is not long for this world.

With moisture in the ground the Manakin guy were able to polish up a few detail areas around the cartpaths.

With 2 inches of rain and 100 degree heat indexes, the bermuda is growing nicely. We took Tuesday and Wednesday to get some good cuts down and the big sprayers came out to apply the growth regulator. This year the new sprayers can spray the fairways in less than half the time than before, making these applications much for feasible for mid-summer.

The deer have been out of control this year, even eating our begonias. We had to pull them out here at the front entrance and go back to some lantana which the deer avoid.

Our new doors were installed on the new upper storage building this week, completing our building renovations for the year.

Tae and Melvin have been grinding away over at the sand bins. They are building a custom, sliding roof that will cover where we store our greens topdressing sand. We need this sand to stay dry and just covering it with a tarp never works. Dry sand falls right in to the canopy on the greens and there is no need to brush it in. Between not having any dry storage and having our regular sand company bought up and shut down by a concrete company we needed to find a few new solutions.

The roof is built on aluminum tubing and runs on a 1 inch wide rail. We can push the roof back and forth on caster wheels. When a dump truck dumps his load the bed goes up 23 feet. By making the roof "retractable" we could do the project in house and not have to find someone to build a 25 foot tall roof which rain could easily get underneath anyways. We'll see how we did when the thunderstorms come through again!

Enjoy the heat!