On Monday July 27th the Turfcare team performed a needle tine vent on greens along with a light topdressing. With this process taking place greens will be softer and slower to start the week. Monday was a good maintenance day for applications. We were able to spray herbicide for weeds in the parking lot and around the clubhouse areas. Cleanwater Pro was in on Monday and made a second application to the ponds as we work with them towards cleaning these features up.
Excessive heat stress will return this week. It has been a number of days without measurable rainfall and we are watering at full capacity. With this we begin to see wet areas pop up on the property. It’s a catch 22 when we need to water a dry area but in doing so we saturate other areas. The lack of individual control makes these intense heat stretches tough to manage and we either lose turf health from the inability to place water where needed or we lose turf that sits saturated in hot weather. We will do our best to manage while we wait for a reprieve in the heat and believe it or not a needed rainfall.
The last time we hit temperatures in the 36 plus degree range we incurred damage to the course from carts and rickshaws. Poa which is the plant that dominates our playing surfaces has a shallow root system and the inability to handle intense heats. We will run irrigation cycles on Wednesday during the day to aid in cooling the temperatures at the surface with hopes we do not see the same volume of damage as we did during the last stretch of heat in the high 30’s. To clarify the last time we saw the damage to fairways and collars was a direct result of heat stress and no other factors.
With August upon us at the end of the week we will begin to protect tee spacing for the Canadian senior championship that will take place the first week of September. Tee markers on the yellow deck will be restricted to tee space to ensure a positive experience for the event. The range deck will also be protected and we will restrict the use of the back of the range deck for the month of August to allow this to heal on time for the event.