Well...Well.....Well...Look What Showed Up: Course Update
Talk about a role reversal this week! HCC received over 3” of rain this week from what felt like some sort of weird tropical system…in May. That 3” was actually more rain than we had received over the previous 3 ½ months combined! Desperately what we had been wishing for…just not seven days before Member-Guest. Good thing we got all of our plant protectants out on Tuesday on the greens and a fertility package applied to all of the short grass. It was refreshing to get a maintenance day to do the things we needed to do.
We have been double cutting greens, topdressing, and rolling to combat these wet, humid conditions while still maintaining green speeds and firmness. We’re really happy with where the greens are at after all of that moisture, especially with regards to firmness and speed. The accelerator will be pushed to the floor through next week…should be fun to see where we can get them.
The fairways on Manakin have not been mown in seven days. Manakin’s Latitude 36 is a much denser surface, but it takes some time to get going compared to the Vamont bermudagrass on Sabot. Sabot has actually been the drier golf course this week due to the increased topgrowth of the Vamont — the grass is simply sucking up water more efficiently.
Manakin still has some thin areas around tees and bunkers, and we are trying to avoid dinging those areas up or making them worse by running fairway mowers over saturated turf…especially six days before Member-Guest. Today’s weather was dreamy, and you could just tell the grass was happy to finally see the sun again. The guys were actually out walkmowing tees and approaches to keep up on Manakin today.
We are going to stay off most of the short-cut areas on Manakin for one more day to give everything sufficient opportunity to dry down and continue growing before mowing. We have raised mowing heights slightly for this first mow and then will — not so gradually — work them back down for next week. This will require a lot of mowing and labor, but the crew is excited to log some additional hours getting things dialed in.
The wet weather did give us a chance to get ahead on detail work heading into next week, which should pay dividends as we prepare the property for one of the biggest events of the year.
As a reminder…we are still finding A LOT of broken tees left on the tee boxes. Do your part and please pick them up — or we may have to consider a new club logo.
We’re excited to get into this weekend and next week with plenty of work ahead as we prepare to present our campus to the guests of our members!