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