Tuesday Morning Rainbow

Fairway Aerification

    

        

Our annual fairway aerification is underway at Swope.  As with any aerification, we are looking to relieve compaction and help with water infiltration.  We just started last week and only have four fairways to go. The next time you play golf, see if you can tell which ones we have done.  While the pictures may look like we are tearing them up, we actually get them back to pretty close to normal after dragging plugs and mowing them.

Bunker Rebuild on #4

These are some pictures of our current project of rebuilding the bunker on #4.  All of the old sand has been removed and we are rebuilding portions of the lip towards the green. We should have sand replaced and some sod installed sometime next week.

New Tee Sign

We installed a new tee sign on hole #1 complete with pin position, cart rules, and even the day's forecast.

Aerification Is Complete!

Aerification is all complete, and greens are well on their way to being healed up. The last couple days of rain have really helped beat the sand down into the holes. We have now rolled greens three times since Monday, and plan on mowing tomorrow. I played nine holes on Tuesday and was pleasantly surprised at how smooth they actually were. There were still a few bumps here and there but not to bad for being one day out from completion.
This year we tried a different approach by topdressing before we aerified.  We did this to eliminate the ruts we get in the green from the heavy topdresser.  Our approach worked great, and I think we'll be able to smooth them out much quicker.

Josh running the aerifier on 1 green.

Green with topdressing on the left waiting to be aerified and the aerified portion on the right.

The final product.

10 Tee Cleanup and Ornamental Transplanting

Here are some more of the ornamental grasses that we divided and moved to the back of 15 tee and 13 tee.

We also divided some other ornamental grasses and ringed the backside of 15 tee.

We did the same on the back of 13 tee along with clearing out more brush.

10 Tee Cleanup

The following are some pictures of clean up we have done along the left side of 10 tee box.  We started by dividing the two overgrown ornamental grasses that were right next to the tee.  We were able to divide these into 15 individual plants which we spaced out along the entire left side of the tee.  In the mean time, we cleared brush and vines along the left side that were becoming overgrown.  This will make a big difference on the appearance of this tee complex.

The two ornamental grasses that we divided into 15 plants.  They are black because we burned them down a few weeks ago.

This is how the tee looked before doing any clearing.  You can see the tree branches were starting to stick out over the edge of where we mow.

After clearing some of the brush back.  Also, you can see some of the ornamental grasses spaced out for planting.

After heavy limning of trees and clearing of brush.

All the newly divided ornamentals spaced out along the left side of the tee.

Goose Damage Repair

We just started taking plugs from our nursery green to repair damage from geese.  Number 12 green has about 55 plugs alone so it will take us a few days to finish

Spring Warm Up

What a relief the last few days have been from the frigid temperatures we have had most of the winter.  The golf course was opened up last Friday, and has been busy every since.  It has been great to get out on the course for some of our early spring duties.  We have sprayed all of our zoysia tees and fairways with pre-emergent and roundup to kill any poa annua that has popped up.  The roundup does not harm the zoysia since it is still dormant.  Yesterday we were able to mow greens for the first time since early last December.  I was amazed at how much grass we actually cut off since we have been so cold the last couple of months.  It really smoothed them out as well.  Today we got the roller out for the first time, and smoothed the greens out even more.  What a difference this machine makes, especially this time of year.  We will continue to clean up the course from the winter this week and will soon be mowing rough.

Winter Refurbishing

We have been spending the bulk of our time the last couple of months inside the shop doing our normal winter work.  That's right, I do me work.  Just because I have not made a post since November does not mean we were taking all of that time off.  The winter time is admittedly slower paced, but lots of projects are still being accomplished.   This includes lots of sanding, staining, spray painting, and reorganizing.  We have 24 benches that sit on every hole with some having two that we sand and re-stain.  We also have ball washers and trash cans on every hole that we sand and repaint.  Winter is also a good time to bring in all of our 150 yard poles and repaint them.  The few days that we have been able to get outside we spent cleaning up limbs from the heavy winds we have had.  Last year, the weather allowed us to get many trees limned up.  Fortunately, we finished about two-thirds of the course during the winter.  We have not been as lucky this year with brutally cold temperatures, and now a heavy snow cover.  I still have confidence that we will be able to get through a lot of the remaining trees.  

Here is one of the 24 benches that we refurbish.

All of the 150 yard poles repainted.  We also made six extras for replacement throughout the year.

A look from the clubhouse down #1 fairway after nearly a foot of snow.

Our assistant superintendent Nick Bishop has moved on from Swope Memorial to be the assistant at Crestwood Country Club in Pittsburg, KS.  He is now closer to family and has fishing and hunting right out of his backdoor.  I'm a little jealous of the second part since being in the city makes good fishing spots are hard to find.  Nick was a huge part of our team the last two years, and we wish him the best.

We have since hired Josh Linn as assistant superintendent.  Josh is originally from Smith Center, Kansas and is a recent graduate of the University of Arizona.  He brings a wide range of experiences from different golf courses including working at Dove Mountain where the PGA's Match Play Championship has been held the last few years.  We look forward to what Josh brings to the team.