Kansas City Match Play

The Kansas City Golf Association has recently announced the return of its Match Play Championship.  The tournament will be held over three days at Swope Memorial on May 10-12.  It is the first time since 2002 the tournament will be played, but will mark the 57th time in history it has been contested.  Swope Memorial last hosted the event in 1958.  The event boosts a lot of history including Jim Colbert and Tom Watson as previous winners.  You can read more about the upcoming event on the Kansas City Golf Association website.

  http://www.kansascitygolfer.org/2012/12/kansas-city-match-play-returns-to-kcga-schedule/

Irrigation Blow Out

The time finally came when we could blow out our irrigation system.  Usually we are able to do this around Thanksgiving, but the warm and dry weather has forced us to hold off until now.  We completed the blow out on Wednesday, December 19.  

The process involves hooking a large air compressor into our irrigation lines through the use of a quick coupler.  We then turn each irrigation head on through the satellite controllers to blow any water in the lines out to prevent them from freezing.  It takes us all day to completely blow the water out of the system.  Now we don't have to worry about any irrigation leaks until we charge the system back up in early March.

 

I also snapped this picture this morning of our putting green and first hole.  The first snow fall of the year came on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.  It looks like there won't be any golf at least for today!

 



 



 

Tree Trimming

Although the date says December 7, it still feels like early October.  The warm weather this week has allowed us to continue trimming as many trees as we can get to.  We started going down both sides of #15 early this week and wrapped up going down #12 on Friday.  Hopefully we can continue trimming a little each week to make a dent in the thousands of trees on the golf course.

Trees to the right of #13 red tee.

The cleaned-up trees after a little trimming.

Soil Samples

This fall, we will be sending in a few soil samples from our greens to be analyzed.  The samples will provide us with valuable information that we can use to help formulate our fertility program for the coming year.  We will be able to see if we are deficient or high in different nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium as well as determine our pH and organic matter content.  We generally have samples tested once per year, and then compare our results from year to year.

Leaf Cleanup

The leaves have been falling for a couple weeks, and we are well underway with cleanup.  This is a large undertaking here at Swope because of how many trees we have.  Our main mode of removal is through the use of blowers.  We have two pull behind buffalo blowers that we can maneuver around trees with ease.  We also have a larger tractor mounted blower that we save for the larger areas.  For the most part, we corral the leaves across the rough and fairway until we get them to the trees where we blow them as far into as possible.  In areas where a tree line is not practical, we use our large rough unit to mulch the leaves as much as possible and then blow them again to disperse through the rough.  We will continue to blow and mulch leaves for another few weeks until most all of them have dropped.

Verticutting

We recently completed verticutting the greens for the second time in two weeks.  This is a great cultural practice to remove thatch from the top layer of the greens.  It promotes a more upright growth of the turf which will provide a cleaner cut with the mowers.  This will help in ball roll speed as well.  There is little negative impact to immediate playability of the greens.  We will also add a light sand topdressing after we are finished.  I hope to get one more verticutting in before temperatures really start to dive down. 

Blowing off any excess clippings not collected by the mower.

Close-up of green after verticutting.


 

Fall Overseeding

The warm and dry summer left us with many bare areas on the golf course.  Areas that received no irrigation were hit the hardest.  Thankfully, we are able to utilize a tractor mounted slit seeder that does a really good job.  In total, we planted about 2000 pounds of seed in the rough.  We are fairly happy with the results even though the fall has been rather dry. 

We also used a couple seed mats in a few places on #14.  These mats help hold moisture so the germinating seed does not dry out.  This is the way to go when seeding bare areas.  These are pictures from right of the fairway and right of the new grass bunker by the green.

 

One Hot Summer!

What a summer this has been!  As many of you have probably figured out, this summer has been one of the hottest summers on record.  Temperatures have routinely hovered around the century mark since early July.  On top of that, we have had very little precipitation to speak of.  It has certainly stressed out the turf as well as our maintenance staff.  We have spent hours nearly everyday cooling greens, watering green's surrounds, and even hand watering zoysia.  Mowing requirements have been cut by over half due to the slow growth of turf. 

Even after a record setting summer, I believe our greens have held up as well as any summer before.  This is attributed to many different factors, but starts with our dedicated staff.  We have a crew of guys that is passionate about the golf course, and have exceeded my high expectations.  Syringing greens in 100 degree weather day after day can begin to wear on you, believe me.  Our guys have never complained and continue to keep our greens looking as good as they possibly can.

I would also like to say thank you to the many golfers who have braved the warm weather over the past month, and put up with our maintenance staff being on the greens during play.  Often times, we have no choice but to water greens while groups are putting.  We appreciate the patience and understanding most of you have had while we complete this necessary maintenance practice.

It is still early August, but it appears that we have made it through the brutal part of the summer.  I am hoping for a cool and wet fall to help the thousands of pounds of seed germinate that we will be putting out later this month. 

#14 Bunker Renovation

This week we completed another conversion of a sand bunker into a grass bunker.  The bunker on #14 was another one that was in need of repair to remain playable.  We decided to grass in the bunker because of its location and susceptibility to washouts after heavy rain events.  As you can see in the picture below, the bunker needed lots of work to return to playable after a couple inches of rain.

Heavy washout with underlying rock exposed.

We started by removing all of the material in the bunker and stripping off the surrounding grass on the face and edges.  Then we began using 20 yards of topsoil to shape the bunker into the way we wanted it to look when finished.  We also added two drainage boxes to catch water coming in during rain events.  The last step was sodding the base of the bunker with tall fescue and the face of the bunker with zoysia.  We did this because the tall fescue will grow a little taller, and will still penalize a shot that ends up in the grass bunker.  The area on the slope of the green was already zoysia so we wanted to continue this along the face.  Hopefully the weather does not turn to hot so the fescue can grow in within a couple weeks.

After sand and grass was removed.

Soil being added to add shape to the bunker.

Soil work almost completed.

After sod work was completed.

Mole Damage

What a way to start a Friday!

Early this morning when we arrived at the course, we quickly realized that someone was working overtime through the night.  That someone was a mole, and he found his way onto #4 green.  This was not the first time I have seen this at Swope.  A couple of years ago, we had a mole cause the same damage to an area on #6 green.  Fortunately, we were able to get the damage repaired before any play got to the hole.  I promise we will find this mole and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law!

After 30 minutes of repair.

Venting Greens

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we completed the venting of our greens.  This is a cultural practice we do to improve the air and water movement under the surface.  There is little effect to play once we mow and roll the green right after the venting is complete.  The same machine that we aerify greens with in the spring and fall is used, but a different type of tine is used.  These tines look more like a knife, and do not pull any material out of the green.  The tines go about two and a half inches deep.  Completing this cultural practice once every three to four weeks will help with the long term success of the greens especially in July and August. 

Holes made by the bayonet tine.

#5 and #12 Bunker Renovations

If you are a regular at Swope Memorial, you have probably seen our crew renovating a bunker from time to time.  In the last four years, we have renovated roughly 20 bunkers.  Some of them already need to have sand replaced again.  With close to 50 bunkers on the course, the bunkers become a time consuming challenge for a staff the size of ours.  The recent rains have caused our crew to spend the better part of the morning pumping water out of bunkers that do not drain properly and preparing them for play. 

In the last two months or so, we have converted two of these bunkers from sand into grass.  Here are a few of the before pictures when we were just starting to remove the old contaminated sand.

#5 Fairway Bunker

#12 Greenside Bunker

#12 Greenside Bunker after all the contaminated sand was removed and drain tile exposed.

 Both bunkers were in dire need of repair.  The bunker on #5 was surrounded by trees, had a face to steep to keep sand pushed up on, and was not appealing to the eye.  The greenside bunker on #12 was much the same.  Over time, the face of the bunker washed out more and more with every rain event leaving little choice but to take action.

After all of the sand was removed from the bunker, we stripped off all the surrounding sod so we could begin shaping.  Then we shaved off the soil from the edges to create a gradual slope into the bottom.  Lots of pulverized soil had to be brought in to shape #12.


Sod stripped off the perimeter of #12 and edges shaved down

#12 shaped with pulverized soil

The bunker on #5 took lots of tilling with the tractor mounted tiller.  We lowered the mound that surround the bunker substantially to allow our mower to traverse up and down once we were done.

Sod stripped off the perimeter of #5

#5 after lowering the face of the bunker

Once all of the reshaping and dirt work was finished, we ordered our sod and had them finished the next day.  Our goal with this project was to make these areas more maintenance friendly and appealing to the golfer.  The bunker on #12 will still be somewhat of a hazard because we plan to let it grow a little longer so make sure to bail out right!  It will be a couple of weeks until the sod has a chance to knit down and we will open them back up for play.  Until then, they need to be played as ground under repair.


#12 Completed

#5 Completed

Irrigation Repair

Last week we found an irrigation leak by #9 tee.  Unfortunately, the leak turned out to be under the cart path.  This meant we needed to rent a concrete saw to remove part of the asphalt to be able to dig up the leak. 

Nick cutting out a section of cart path.

After removing the section of cart path, we were able to get down to the leak.  The culprit was a 6" T fitting that was servicing one head.  A 6" line meant a lot of water needed to be drained off. 

We removed enough material on either side of the T to cut out the old pipe and replace with new pipe and fittings.  6" fittings can get pretty expensive to replace and are no fun to deal with.  We spent the entire day cleaning out around the pipe, and removing the existing fittings and replacing with new.

6" line servicing one sprinkler head on a 1.5" line

 
We were able to get the water turned back on around 4:30 p.m.  It was a long day of repairs, but I would much rather be dealing with it in April then July!  After we replaced all of the dirt, we filled the rest of the hole with gravel so carts could return to the path.  This week we will replace the asphalt we removed with a patch.

Hole filled with gravel

Greens Aerification

On Sunday, April 1 we began the process of aerifying our greens.  It is a process that we complete once in the Spring and once in the Fall.  This year, we finished up on Tuesday, April 3, and had the course open for play on Wednesday.  It is a time consuming process that involves many steps to return the greens back to normal.

#8 Green

We begin by the actual aerification of the green.  We use a Toro Procore 648 with 1/2 inch tines.  This is a top of the line machine that makes the process much faster.  A windrow attachment brings the plugs into the center to allow for easier removal.  It takes about twenty minutes to complete a green.

The next step is picking up all of the cores.  We use a combination of a core harvester and lots of shovels.  It takes five to six hours to collect the cores. 

#11 Green topdressed with sand

We then topdress all the greens with sand.  This step takes the longest because the amount of sand used.  Three to four loads of a topdresser are used per green.  The sand then has to dry before a drag mat is used to work the sand into the holes.  Some of the excess sand is blown off the green with a buffalo blower. 

After the sand has been drug in, we can then begin rolling the green to help smooth them back out.  We use a machine that vibrates the ground as it goes along to help shake some of the excess sand into the holes.  At the same time, the rollers smooth out the surface.

After rolling is complete, we begin applying two different kinds of fertilizers.  This is the last step to complete aerification.  After the fertilizer is applied, we water the greens to soak in the sand and fertilizer. 

The greens will take some time to return back to normal.  Generally with good growing conditions, they will be back to normal in under two weeks.  Aerification is an essential cultural practice to promote root growth and drainage, and to relieve compaction.  We must aerify now to help produce good greens in the hottest part of the summer.

Tree Removal

The warm winter provided us many opportunities to remove trees on the golf course.  All the trees we removed were already dead.  The wood was cut into fireplace length, split, and stacked for future use in the clubhouse or to be sold.  This spring we will be renting a stump grinder and taking out all of the stumps that accumulated over the year.  We will then fill the holes with topsoil and add seed or sod.  In the next month, we plan on having the left side of the par 3 eighth hole trimmed back to open up the left side of the tee.  Look for a future post on our progress.  We have hopes to begin replacing trees sometime in future.

 That's Nick the assistant taking down a dead oak behind #18 blue tee.

Behind #18 blue tee after the tree was removed.

 

This oak on the left side of #9 was struck by lightning.  Removing it really opened up the right side for a shot into the green.

This oak on the left side of #12 was dead for a couple years.  It never effected play because it was in the tall grass, but it is nice to remove the eye sore.

This was the largest tree we had to remove between #5 and #9.

Talk about a lot of chainsaw work!  The largest logs of this tree could barely be lifted with the tractor.

There is still a lot of wood to be split.  The winter of 2011-2012 did not provide us many opportunities to burn wood in the fireplace in the clubhouse.  We were able to purchase another set of safety chaps and a safety helmet with our profits from selling seasoned firewood.  We still have more to sell!

Welcome to the Swope Memorial Maintenance blog page.  I hope this page will help shed some light on the ongoing maintenance at the golf course.