Cultural Work on Cypress Greens

We really got after the greens on Cypress this past week as we were closed for a couple of days to get the work done.  If you were out there playing now on them you probably don’t realize all that was done because they are very smooth and clean. 

I’ve been watching this grass, Emerald bermudagrass, since I started here in January, and like I’ve said before it is a different type of turf.  It does not produce nearly as much organic matter/thatch as the other ultras like Tifeagle, Miniverde, or what you used to have out here years ago, Champion.  Organic matter is essentially any plant growth or decomposed matter from the plant that forms below the grass in the soil.  Organic matter will accumulate to high levels if not taken care of with practices like core aerification, verticutting, topdressing, solid tine aerification, etc.  These practices either dilute or remove this material, giving the plant more room to grow and mature.  Without removal it will accumulate to the point that it becomes a sponge and your plant gets stunted and roots aren’t allowed to mature.  You become more susceptible to disease and pests as the plant is just not healthy enough to stand the pressures of weather and daily play.  Besides that, the putting quality is so poor when not maintained properly. So, the choice of Emerald is good in that regard, as you don’t have to do as much removal, but it still needs maintenance. 

Verticutting at 0"height, flush with the soil

 We removed a good size core in May when we aerified, and while looking at the profile the last few weeks I didn’t see the need to go in and remove a core at all this time.  So we changed up our cultural work to focus mostly on grain reduction and at the same time open up the canopy with a solid tine to allow for water penetration, reduce surface compaction, and allow for gas exchange.  We started with a good verticutting, 2 directions, down and back over the same pass.  It is essentially a quadruple verticut, attacking the grain from all angles.  It is almost like taking your dog to the groomer! Gotta thin out that hair (leaf blades) for a healthier hair and skin layer.  Like the hair, the grass just stacks on top of itself without proper control and when putting, the ball will move and waver from side to side.  So, the verticutting is done to thin the canopy and allow the plant to grow tighter and closer to the soil surface. 

Double cutting surface at .125" with baskets - roughly 6 baskets of clippings per green!

Lots of clippings and plants removed - good thing

 

After we blow the surface completely off, we came in with our triplex greensmower at a lower height and double cut all green surfaces. We mow down and back over the same pass to catch all leaf blades at two different angles.  This really cleaned them up.  Most people think that after greens are verticut they are unputtable for days.  That is simply not the case and at every other club I’ve been at the members actually looked forward to this process as it made the greens smoother and faster.  For you physicists out there, the biggest factor effecting ball speed is friction caused by the leaf blades.  The verticutting process removes leaf material, which essentially decreases the friction on the ball.  The only real negative to the practice is that you might see the verticut lines for a few days after, but if this practice is done frequently the lines will not affect your ball roll at all. 

View of 5 green after verticutting and mowing - some minor scalping is a good thing here

View of 3 green after verticutting and mowing

After heavy topdress we needle tine with the Toro 648 - notice small holes on tight spacing

On day 2, we came in and topdressed the greens very heavy, as you can see from the picture.  The sand, after we work it in, moves down into those verticut lines.  The sand replaces leaf blade which creates a firmer, truer surface.  The way bermudagrass grows in the summer this process has to take place every 1-2 weeks for the best possible putting.  Behind the topdressing we solid tined the greens with a 0.2” needle tine that goes down about 3” into the soil, getting below the organic layer and opening up channels for air/water to penetrate to deeper levels.  We follow behind with a double rolling of the surface to smooth it out after the solid tine, making it puttable right behind.  We drag the sand with our bunker rake machines and their broom attachments to work the sand down into the canopy.  The surface is watered 10-15 minutes after all of these processes are complete to move the sand down into the canopy and also give the soil the water it needs after a stressful series of cultural practices.

Double rolling behind the solid tine work

We opened the course again on Wednesday, and just ahead of play we sprayed a wetting agent and some timely root absorbed fertilizers on the surface and watered it all in to get the products down in the root zone where they can work.  We should get some really good response in root growth over the next month due to these practices.  We sprayed them again today with a foliar package and growth regulator.  They are in great shape at this point and will only get better from now till fall.  Lots of work done.  Crew did an outstanding job this week making it all happen. We will be doing the Pecan Course the same way on August 31 - September 1. 

New Jacobsen Equipment

I’m sure many of you have either heard us talking about the new equipment or have actually seen it out there in action, but I’d like to spend a little time letting you know about it in detail and what it will do for our course conditions.  It was very easy to tell for anyone who knows anything about our operation that we just didn’t have enough equipment to maintain such a large place up to the standard that our club desires. CBIGG listened to our concerns and came through big time and got us what we needed.  That is a very large commitment to make when you are talking about 30+ clubs.  The total amount spent across the company was over $3 million!  This will go a long way in helping us improve your experience out on the course. 

CBIGG, after careful consideration of all 3 major turf equipment brands, (Toro, Jacobsen, and John Deere) decided to go with Jacobsen.  Most of our old equipment that you are used to seeing on the course is Toro (red machines).  The Jacobsen machines are all orange so you can definitely see what is new out there.  There are some minor differences in the operation of the new machines but the crew has quickly adjusted and you will see the same quality of cut that you are used to seeing with the Toro.  The biggest differences that you will see from years’ past is the maintenance intervals have been improved to give a better cut no matter the machine or manufacturer, and the addition of more units only improves the quality and time needed to get the job done. 

In all, we will be adding 19 pieces of equipment to our fleet!  There are still some products working their way to us but all of the cutting units are here and in action – 7 cutting units, 1 sprayer, 1 tractor/loader, 1 cart path edger, 2 heavy duty trucksters, and 7 utility carts – we are still waiting on the utility carts and sprayer.  I’ll spend some time here talking about the cutting units and come back later and talk about the rest of the equipment. I put the price of each machine next to what we received just so you can see how big of an investment this is.  These units aren’t like the riding mowers you can buy at Home Depot.

Starting with our most important asset, the greens, we got two new Jacobsen Greens Kings (price - $25,000 each). They have 15 blade reels, designed to cut about twice as much grass as the standard 11 blade units of days past.  Our old greens mowers, the Toro 3250, had 14 blade reels and gave us similar results that we will see now.  These Toro units will now be used for cutting tee boxes and approach areas around the greens.  Since I have been here we have been cutting tees/apps with large fairway units, as that is all we had. This just puts unnecessary stress on our most important grass areas. So, this addition of new greens mowers will improve both greens and tees.  The Toro units were ground and new bed knives placed on them so the quality of cut is as good as new.  Big improvements will be made to these areas as you can already see if you have played recently.

 

Fairways were definitely a struggle when I arrived.  We had older units, but due to their age and the amount of hours on them only one worked at any given time.  Mowing 50 acres of fairways is just way too much to ask for one unit every week.  Even though both units were only 4-5 years old, the amount of hours placed on them gave them the real life equivalent of about 8-10 years in age, and they weren’t maintained properly.  We added 2 new Jacobsen LF570s (price - $46,000 each) to the fleet to help get the fairways mowed quicker and with better quality.  With more units at our disposal, there will be less hours placed on each machine and less wear on the blades, which is only a good thing all around. 

Roughs got a huge boost with the addition of 3 new units.  We added 2 new Jacobsen AR-522s (large 5 deck cutting units – price $43,000 each) and 1 AR-3 (smaller 3 deck unit – price $26,000 each).  I’ve worked at a number of 36 hole properties in my time and in order to get the roughs mowed once per week we needed 2 large units and 1 smaller unit per course(for about 120-150 acres of turf per course).  When I got here at Sweetwater we only had 2 large units and 1 small unit for 350 acres of turf!  Unless the machines ran 24 hours a day it just wasn’t possible to get around both courses in a week, so it took a good two weeks to get it done.  This left piles of clippings everywhere and mad golfers having to hit out of 4” tall summer bermuda grass – no fun! We now have enough cutting units to be able to take care of each course every week, which will make for a better look and quality to the turf but also a better golfing experience.  Huge improvement!

I think you will find in a short period of time that all of these new tools will drastically improve the course conditions here at Sweetwater.  There is a purpose behind every machine and why we have it in our fleet, and it is all designed to give us the best greens, tees, fairways, and roughs possible. This big $325,000 investment for Sweetwater shows that CBIGG is committed to quality and improving your experience here at the club.   

Cypress Course Aerification - August 10/11

We are into the hottest month of the year, but fall is definitely on the way!  I’m sure no one will be upset when the 100 degree days go away.  In order for us to get ready for the long fall and winter we have ahead we have one final aerification on the courses left to do.  We will be closing the Cypress Course this coming Monday and Tuesday (August 10-11) and reopening for play on Wednesday.  This will give us a chance to prepare the turf and soil for the next 8 months until our next aerification next May. 

This aerification will be a little bit different than what you saw from me last time in May.  The Emerald bermudagrass that we have on these greens just doesn’t produce the thatch/organic material that the ultradwarfs like Tifeagle, Miniverde, and Champion do – not anywhere close.  My analysis of the greens profile (the soil from 0-12” deep) is that in the 5 or so years that this grass has been on these greens very little material has accumulated and our organic matter percentages just aren’t high enough to warrant an aggressive core removal program.  That doesn’t mean that it won’t change in time, but I just don’t see the necessity in pulling cores just to pull cores.  I never thought I would say that, but Emerald is just a different grass. 

So, on the green surfaces starting Monday we will be doing a series of verticutting before any topdressing or aerification is done.  We will go two different directions, down and back over the same pass to try and remove as much grainy leaf material as we can.  This will open up the turf canopy for topdressing to work its way in.  We will double cut the greens after the surface is blown off.  As you have seen over the past month since we started verticutting weekly the ball roll actually improves and does less wobbling back and forth.  Our next step in the process is to topdress the greens heavily and then follow behind with a needle/pencil tine aerification.  It is a solid tine that is about 2/10” wide and goes down to a depth of about 2-3”.  Once this is complete we will roll and drag in the sand into the small holes and the verticut lines.  The heal time on this will be more like a few days as opposed to a couple of weeks.  This is the best thing for these greens at this time.  We will follow behind with a soil spray consisting of wetting agents and fertility to improve rooting depth and plant health. 

While we are working on greens we will also be aerifying tees and continuing our aerification of fairways.  Just like in May, we will be removing a ½” core from the tee areas and practice tees.  This is a minimally invasive process that will help water penetration and plant rooting depth on our second most important surfaces.  As many of you know, these tees are very hard and compacted, making it difficult to place a tee on the ground at times.  Consistently doing this process a couple times a year will help alleviate that issue.  We will continue aerifying fairways and pick up where we left off in May.  With rains in May we were only able to get 4-5 holes complete.  We would like to finish that process and get the entire course done once this year.  Without aerification on these heavy clay soils you just can’t get the proper plant health that is desired for great turf conditions.  The roots aren’t allowed to penetrate which stunts the top growth and doesn’t allow it to mature and spread like it should.  The core removal process has not been done on these fairways in a number of years.  On the fairways that were done in May we are already seeing great results.  This process along with monthly spray applications of wetting agent and growth regulator will allow the plant to mature and reach deeper root zones. 

We will give the Cypress Course about 3 weeks to heal and then we will be doing the Pecan Course on August 31/September 1.  This will ensure that you always have one healthy/non aerified course to play golf on. 

Storm Damage

It has been quite a month here at the Club weather wise.  Somebody turned on the rain and we can't seem to shut it off!  On Monday night we experienced one of the heaviest rains we have had in 10+ years, receiving almost 11" of rainfall in a 10 hour period.  We were one of the hardest areas hit around town.  We have also had almost 21" of rainfall for the entire month of May, and we are at roughly 45" of rain for the year to this point.  The average YEARLY rainfall in Houston is around 45" of rain, so we are well ahead of average, and that has made for some very wet conditions on our golf courses this year and especially in the month of May. 

 

I've included some pictures to show just how bad it actually got here.  For the most part it was just a lot of standing water in many areas as we did not have too much structural damage from the storms.  There were a lot of newly made lakes!  There were a number of large and small limbs from the trees to pick up as the winds blew through here pretty hard at one point.  We also lost 3-4 trees.  Debris was everywhere after the waters receded and required some cleanup work before we were able to mow anything.

 

#1 Pecan - creek on left side of hole completely full and well out of its banks all the way across the fairway

#2 Pecan - same creek in front of tees well out of its banks and flooding most of right side of hole

#9 Pecan - creek out of it banks and water backed up to around 150-200 yard range from green, and water up into bunker in front of the green

#12/13 Pecan - left of these holes - a new lake was created, cart path completely submerged

Bunkers obviously took a serious blow and will take a lot of work and repair to get them back to where they were.  There were a number of bunkers that were underwater from the nearby flooding areas, and these are the ones with the most damage.  Any time you get moving water going through a bunker you will encounter silt contamination that can mix with the sand and cause many long term issues.  This silt will mix in with the drainage and eventually clog up the bunkers.  Our practice after any rain is to go in and skim off the dirty material and dispose of it before we rake the bunkers.  This eliminates the possibility of that silt causing long term damage.  After 11" of rain this process is obviously magnified to a much larger extent.  Normal rain might include skimming off 2-5% of the surface area of the bunker, but after this heavy event in some cases it is 100% of the surface area that is effected.  That process will take time before we can push the sand back up on the edges.  Once we are finished we will come back and add new sand to replace what we have lost. While the bunkers are in this state we ask that you play them as ground under repair until you see the sand raked. 

 

Typical bunker damage - lots of silt contamination and sand washed down off of edges

The wet conditions also make it very difficult for us to do any mowing at all.  We have been battling all month trying to get caught up but the next rainfall slows us down.  There are some areas of the courses where we haven't been able to mow roughs for 3 weeks now.  We have started mowing some areas today and will continue mowing as long as it stays dry.  We raised the heights on all of our short grass areas so that we do not excessively scalp and further damage the turf.  It will take a few mowings to get caught up and back to normal heights.  It will be a tedious process as the grass is so tall, and it will require lots of blowing to get the surface clean again. 

 

#7/8 Pecan tunnel - as was the case with all tunnels, completely full and impassable

 The tunnels are obviously a large problem here at Sweetwater when flooding occurs.  As you can see from the photo above almost every tunnel was completely full of water.  Our built in sump pumps were not enough to keep up with 11" of rain.  We were able to pump all of them down on Pecan on Wednesday and will be working on Cypress today and Friday. 

 

It is hard to recover quickly from storm situations like we have faced this month, but we will be working as hard as we can to get conditions back to where they need to be.  It will take longer than normal to get all areas back playable as this was a major rain event that only happens every 5-10 years, but we will get there.  Your patience is appreciated during this time. 

New Daily Pin Sheets

Just another small upgrade to the arsenal - we are rolling out new pin sheets starting today, April 1^st.  No, it is not an April Fool’s Day joke, it is for real!  This system will give you much more accurate yardage as you hit your approach shots into the green.  The old 1,2,3 system only gave you a guesstimate, and depending on the size of the green and where the pin was located you would have to make a guess between 10-15 yards.  Sometimes, that is the difference of a club or two for most folks.  I know what you’re saying, “Most players don’t even know which direction they are going to hit it let alone need the exact yardage”.  Well that may be true, but at least with the exact yardage you can’t make an excuse now about that. You’ll have to get with Bob and Jim to fix the rest of your game!



Pin Sheet for Pecan - each hole has a depth of green with a plus/minus number in the center telling you distance from center of green

These new pin sheets will be printed daily based on what day of the month it is.  There are 31 completely different pin sheets, all with randomly selected hole placements based on depths of the green.  There is a very good mixture of front, back, and middle pin locations for each day.  These pin sheets will be located on your golf carts as you go out to play.  We will also get a stack of them to the starter house in case you lose one or didn’t receive one. 

For those of you that don’t have range/yardage finders this will give you very accurate information to help you select the right club.  All you need to do is check the nearest sprinkler head for the yardage you are from the center of the green and then add or subtract the day's hole location to get your exact yardage.  For those of you with yardage finders that may not need these sheets, we still have the flag sticks with the prisms inside so you can easily get your number by shooting the flagstick.  My goal is to make sure it wasn’t me that screwed up your shot!  We will continue to do everything we can to maximize your experience here at Sweetwater.  Please let me know if you have any questions.   

Cart Boundary Stake System

Have you ever noticed around greens or tee boxes that there are areas where there just isn’t any grass?  Maybe next to where everybody parks to walk up to the green? Or where everyone drives onto the fairway from their tee shot?  There is a solution for these cart stressed areas.  We have been working in the shop during the inclement weather times getting this stake system fabricated and we are now ready to put it in action.

4x4x18" posts - one of them placed near cart path and other on other side of fairway

 As you come out to play the courses this week you will notice these large wood stained 4x4 posts (18" tall) with either blue or red painted on the top on all par 4s and 5s on both courses.  The blue ones will be on the Cypress Course to go along with the blue flags, and the red ones will be on the Pecan Course, as it has red flags.  These stakes will be indicators for all carts to let you know where to enter and where to exit each hole with your cart.  There will be one placed just after the tee boxes and two of them up near the green on each side of the hole.  From the tee box you will need to keep your carts on the path until you drive PAST the marker and then you are free to drive anywhere on the hole until you get to the two stakes near the approach to the green, at which point you need to get back on the cart path BEFORE PASSING them.  Due to the shortness of the par 3 holes we are going to designate them Cart Path Only at all times, and there will not be any markers. 

 

You can see from these simple drawing diagrams what is the correct and incorrect ways to drive near the stakes. 

Past tee boxes - one stake near cart path - you can see from the arrows where you are allowed to drive - always go past the stake before entering fairway - imaginary dotted line horizontally from the stake and cart path



Near green - imaginary dotted line across both stakes showing where you are not allowed to drive

There has always been a large number of members at my previous clubs who pleaded with me to get this done to help the turfgrass around the high profile areas (tees and greens), and it works great provided we get membership buy-in.  We will rotate the location of these markers on a daily basis so we can spread out the traffic, but they will always be roughly 25-100 yards from the green.  This will allow the roughs around the tees and greens to grow without the additional stress.  It will give them a fighting chance to be the best looking grass on the course, which is what you would want and expect around your best areas.  We also have the smaller 8" wooden stakes along the cart paths near greens and tees protecting areas where carts park to walk up to these areas. 

Now that these markers are up and the stress is taken off, we will begin the recovery and healing process around these areas.  We will do some solid tine aerification to relieve the compaction that heavy cart traffic can cause, and then follow up with some needed fertility and deep watering to get the plant back to recovery.  It is work that you won’t really notice as a golfer, but the benefits will be very nice. 

We want to make your round as enjoyable as we can from an ease of access perspective as well as a quality of conditions perspective.  We feel these new guidelines will fit right in with both of those.  We can’t do it without the help of our membership.  We will also make announcements prior to golf outings letting them know the cart rules as there is a good bit of traffic from those groups.  Thank you for your understanding and help in spreading the word.  In order to make these courses the best they can be it is going to take more than just effort on the course maintenance staff to get it done - everyone can participate and help in the cause by leaving the course in better shape then you found it. 

 

 

New Golf Course Flags

One nice little change that you will see this week on both golf courses – a different look to the flags on each hole.  We went with a more classic style look and a little differentiation between the two courses. You will see blue flags on the Cypress Course and red flags over on the Pecan Course.  Not all that earth shattering, but just a little something to put some separation between the two.  It even says the name of the course embroidered on each flag underneath the embroidered logo.  We also made little putting green flags in blue and red with the course logo instead of the plain white flags.  We will continue to use the white flag sticks with yardage reflector.  Just another small step towards improving your experience here at Sweetwater. 

New Flags with course name below logo