Aerification. The process the golf course superintendent loves and every golfer hates. Most courses around town are completing greens aerification about this time and Swope is no different. We wrapped ours up on Monday afternoon with very few hiccups. I'm hoping this year we will have a shorter healing period than last year. This is partly due to the great rain we received Tuesday night into Wednesday, and the use of a slightly smaller tine then last year. We opted to use a smaller tine but more of them. Instead of the aerifier having 24 large tines, we had 30 tines of a smaller size. Last year we never had a nice, soaking rain post aerification. This rain helps to flush the greens of built up sodium from our irrigation water and promote a flush of growth. The cool nights forecasted will slow the growth somewhat, but by the weekend we are hoping for warmer temperatures. Hopefully, in a week to ten days the greens are rolling back to normal.
We are within one month of hosting the Kansas City Match Play Championship and have lots of work to do. There are a few bunker projects and a few tees to resurface that we would like to accomplish before the tournament. With the grass popping out of the ground, we will have to start focusing on more mowing. With heavy downpours, the course gets extremely wet making it difficult to stay on top of the rough. Be sure to bring a few extra golf balls because it can get pretty hairy out there!
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