Course notes 29th July 19’
Periods of heavy growth this summer with 82mm of rain this month and plenty of warm days thrown in. Therefore it has been difficult to keep up with high level of grass growth and in turn taking longer to complete each task. Normally going into July/Aug growth has slowed down as soils become drier but not so this year! Staff are beginning to take there summer holiday week off and this further puts pressure on us to get jobs done. The weather has benefited the partial recovery of the fairways but also brings with it turf disorders (fusarium/fairy ring/nematode) markings and plenty of nuisance mushrooms popping up everywhere.
Greens –
The greens have performed well this summer being reasonably firm (not too many pitch marks) very true and decent speed. Automatic irrigation has only been applied on 4 nights since the early May installation so this highlights the amount of rain that has fallen this year. They have had a couple of liquid seaweed sprays with very little nutrient and have been ticking along nicely. A verti-cut was given last week which has cleaned up some surface debris accumulation and the height of cut has remained constant at 3.9mm which combined with some rolling is providing good surfaces to putt on. Comparing our greens with Lahinch, Portrush, Renaissance and Lytham we are definitely leaner and equally as fast it would seem. Heading into autumn maintenance week (mid Sept) I would like to Graden scarify the greens and introduce some bent grass seed. This will create a bit of mess while doing the work with plenty of debris to scrape up but after a couple of cuts should get back close to normal.
Some Fairy ring disorder is re appearing therefore a cluster hollow tine will be required early winter plus a 3/4” tine with verti-drain rather than early Spring in order for getting into shape sooner next year.
Aprons and approaches–
As with the greens performing well and getting cut twice weekly but could do with three cuts (all time consuming)
Tees–
Lots of grass on the tees following the summer feed which went on a bit later this year. Two cuts per week (could do with three) and we are only just keeping on top of them but generally looking healthy with no real problems.
Fairways–
Throughout May and June the fairways were getting a fortnightly cut and since start of July it has been each week (twice before BI Open) therefore much more manpower for this compared to last year. Lots of thin areas from last year have now filled in with Meadow grass and divoting mix grasses and are slowly recovering. The rain this year has certainly helped. Ideally late Autumn, recovery would be enhanced following a hollow core and drag and clean up with the Super 500 flail/collector machine. This would be a very labour intensive job taking probably a couple of days to complete one fairway therefore we could try the 2nd,3rd and 4th and see how we go from there. The 1st fairway is too stoney to hollow tine although the diamond spiker may help it.
Rough–
The tall roughs will be cut and collected later part of August