Winter is upon us

For the last couple of weeks, temperatures have started to consistently drop to the freezing mark at sunrise. Maintenance activity  and our ability to complete work in a timely manner are greatly influenced by the below freezing temperatures. Currently, greens are being mowed one time a week and bunkers are being touched-up one to two times a week. Soon the greensmowers will be retired for the winter and the deer will have free roam of the bunkers. Now, every green has two hole locations requiring each group of golfers to rotate the flag to the other hole location after putting out. On the tees, only the Regular and Forward sets of markers are at each tee complex.  During the winter season, some of the tee locations could be “fairly radical” in an effort to spread wear and tear damage to the non-growing zoysia grass.

Golf carts need to stay off the fairways. When driving in the roughs, try to refrain from driving carts down the fairway edge for long stretches. In the perfect world, you would hit your tee ball and then drive down the cart path until you are ninety degrees from your shot and then leave the cart path to drive to your strategically positioned tee shot.  Of course your cart partner would have hit their tee shot right next to yours, so after both of you hit second shots onto the green, then you would drive the cart back to the cart path and travel to the green. In case your golf game has a glitch and your shots are less than perfect, just remember that limiting your travel time off the cart path is the ultimate goal for golf cart use in the winter. The root system of the grass is in a fragile state due to the constant freeze thaw cycle that accompanies the  nice playing days. Most winter damage is not evident until April when the course tries to grow out of dormancy. 

Maintenance activity:

• Begin working on renovating the last fairway bunker on #5 along with the two greenside bunkers on #5 plus two bunkers at #4 green.
• Replacement of several rotten railroad ties on the steps below #4 tee. Removal of bermuda contaminated zoysia along green edges at #3 green has been started. The bermuda removal work will resume in late March and April.
• Tree pruning and brush removal on slope below #4 tees.
• Spot spraying zoysia with herbicides for poa control and elimination of bentgrass contamination.
• Repairing some rotten floor boards on the bridge at #1.
• Filling some sink holes behind the rock walls at #1 and 9 lake edge.

You know it's getting colder when the green starts to have multiple dark spots throuhgout the putting surface. After years of cross breeding bentgrass, the improved varieties have genetic clones that react to the cold temperatures by turning dark blue to almost black. As the grass gets older, the spots will become more pronounced. Nothing to worry about because they will fade back to green as temperatures warm up in the spring.