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.