Subsurface Drainage Installation

We installed additional subsurface drainage in #6 approach and fairway last week.  The green on #6 funnels water directly onto the approach resulting in wet and soggy conditions at the end of the growing season and throughout the winter dormancy period.  Drainage installation is a very involved process which starts by locating existing subsurface drain lines.  New lines are painted out where needed and the the area is covered in plywood to minimize damage.  A trenching machine is then used to excavate the new lines and the soil is hauled away.

The new trench is then cleaned out by hand using a small narrow shovel.  Pea gravel is then used to cover the bottom of the trench and helps to grade the trench so the water will drain. 

New perforated pipe is laid in the trench and connected to the existing drain lines using couplers.  More pea gravel is placed on top of the pipe to help control contamination of the perforations in the pipe by soil and other material which would limit the water from entering the pipe and draining the area.




Sand is now placed in the trench so that water can easily be drawn from the surface and subsurface into the trench to be carried away by the drain pipe.  Below is a picture of the finished installation.  We will allow time for the new lines and sand to settle before we cover them with new sod.

Fall Greens Aerification

"...more like a work of art than just another sport"

         These words come from crew member Cody Hanna.  Cody is a native of Weogufka, AL in Coosa County, and a recent graduate of The University of Montevallo in Mass Communications with a concentration in journalism.  Cody is helping us out this summer and has a writtin a synopsis, posted below, of his perspective of golf course operations thus far.

"Long rolling fairways, well watered greens and sunset backdrops are just a few elements that make up ones favorite golf course.  For most, a golf course is a place to get away from the everyday rigors of life and enjoy time spent with friends and being outdoors.  Others may spend a lot of their time in frustration over trying to better their handicap, but both parties at some point while they are on the greens take time out of their game to admire what makes up the course.  You notice the pristine greens; well cut fairways and smooth bunkers on television when watching a major tournament, but exactly what all does it take to keep a course looking so good? 

Behind every breathtaking golf course is a well dedicated crew that works throughout the day and sometimes into the night battling the elements to better the appearance of the course.  When someone talks about mail carriers working through rain, sleet or snow; they should really be referencing golf course crew members.  The crew works through hard rains, heavy winds and sometimes scorching heat.  A survival kit for a grounds crew member would include: rain suit, protective glasses, change of clothes, gloves, 3 to 4 bottles of water and close to a pint of sunscreen.  A normal day involves coming to work early in the morning to get the course set before the first tee times.  Jobs vary in difficulty and most are tasks that not even a day to day golfer would recognize.  Removing silt, fly mowing, aerifying greens and fairways and operating a turbine are just to name a few.  Greens, fairways and tee boxes are usually mowed in the mornings along with raking bunkers.  Though keeping greens smooth and well-kept in appearance is usually the main priority, a lot of attention has to be made towards keeping bunkers in good condition.  Bunkers are to be raked on a daily basis and must be protected from weeds and overgrown grass.  Speaking of grass, the worst enemy for a crew member is just that, grass.  Grass grows constantly and always comes back after being trimmed down.  Grass is everywhere and has to be mowed, blown and sometimes raked.

After a brief break for lunch, the second half of the work day begins.  Tasks may include something as simple as fixing divots and spot weed eating around fans and trees or can be more backbreaking such as digging a hole to fix irrigation.  Tasks such as fixing a couple of divots on each hole may not sound too daunting, but one must always factor in weather conditions.  Pouring rain and beaming down heat can make as simple of a task as refilling water coolers an uncomfortable experience.  Golfers may arrive for their tee times to find greens and fairways as green and well-kept as you could imagine, but only hours before a small wind could have blown leaves and debris all over the course.  Small rain showers accompanied by variable winds can add more hours and labor to the work day for the crew.  Heavy rains cause debris to run over onto roughs and fairways and can wash out the edges of bunkers.

Keeping up the grounds on a golf course may not seem like the most exciting job one can have, but the crew takes pride in making the course they work on look as good as possible.  Very few have what all it takes to deal with the sporadic weather and hard work, but when you can put together a group of determined individuals then golf becomes more like a work of art than just another sport."





Cody pictured above on #5.



Fairway patches

I am sure that you have noticed the patches of brown grass in the fairways over the past month or so.  These are patches of bermudagrass that have encroached into the zoysiagrass fairways over the years.  The brown color is the result of herbicide applications that we have been making targeting the bermudagrass encroachment.  The herbicides will not kill the bermudagrass, but merely suppress it and put it in a state of dormancy for about 3-4 weeks, which means that those patches should play similar to bermuda fairways in the winter as opposed to bare ground.  By making the herbicide application every 4 weeks during the growing season and keeping the bermudagrass suppressed, we will provide the zoysiagrass the opportunity to retake those areas.  Zoysiagrass has a slow growth rate so it will take some time, several years likely, for the zoysia to completely retake those areas. 

The herbicide application dings the zoysiagrass a little and consequentially slows the growth of the zoysiagrass for a couple of weeks following the application.  We normally apply growth regulators on the fairways during the growing season to help make the grass more manageable and to also help maintain the consistency in playing conditions.  Due to the growth regulating effects of the herbicide application coupled with allowing the zoysiagrass a better opportunity to fill into these patches, we will not be applying the plant growth regulators this year.  Subsequentially, we will be mowing the fairways more frequently to help keep playing conditions consistent.

So why are we just starting to treat these areas?  Well, actually we have been making these applications for over 10 years.  However, in the past, we only spot-treated the fairways.  The problem with that is the bermudagrass can be very hard to distinguish, without the aide of morning dew, while driving through a fairway on a spray rig.  Our consistency with applications has not been where it needed to be in the past either.  We made a commitment this year to make it a priority to treat the entire fairways every month during the growing season.  By spraying the entire fairways, we eliminate the possibility of missing any bermuda with our application.  We also increase the consistency of the fairways as well, due to the aforementioned  growth regulating effects immediately after the application.

a view of the patches in #4 fairway

looking toward #4 green

a closer view of some patches

an up close view of a patch

The Buzz Around the Legacy

Well Mother Nature gave us a bit of a break in early June, but the time has arrived to turn on the green's fans.  With forecasted highs in the low to mid-90's, nighttime low's in the upper 60's to low 70's, and a noticeable increase in humidity levels, we made the decision to go ahead and turn them on this morning.  The fans help cool the turf, by improving transpiration, which is the process by which the plant cools itself.  The fans improve transpiration by lowering the atmospheric relative humidity.  The lower the humidity the steeper the gradient between the leaf and the atmosphere and the steeper the gradient the faster the plant evaporates moisture to cool itself.  The temperature reduction caused by a fan ranges from up to 15 degrees in front of the fan to around 5 degrees 100 feet from the fan, which has a profound impact on the health of the turf.

Change in Plans

A storm came through the Legacy Course Sunday afternoon taking down 25+ trees, littering the course with debris, and washing out the bunkers.  Our plans for the week quickly changed from grooming the course to putting it back together.  A second round of storms on Monday morning hampered the process, but we were able to get the course back playable that morning.  Today's tasks consists of repairing the bunkers, picking up and blowing debris, and continuing to cut up and remove the downed trees.  The course should be back to normal in a couple of days. 

Preparing for The Player's Championship

An incredible amount of work goes into preparing a golf course for a major PGA tournament.  Tom Vlach and his staff at TPC Sawgrass did an outstanding job documenting the preparations for this years Player's Championship on their blog.  If you ever wonder what all goes into preparing a golf course for a big event, I would encourage you to click on the link below and check it out.  Tom and his staff had the course in phenomenal condition, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows him.  I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to work under him for the 7 plus years that I did when he was here at Greystone!

http://www.tpcsawgrassagronomy.com/

Bradley Johnson Memorial Golf Tournament

The Legacy Course hosted the Bradley Johnson Memorial Golf Tournament on April 11 and 12.  The golf tournament, now in its sixth year, is put on by the Bradley Johnson Memorial Foundation (http://www.bradleyjohnsonmemorialfoundation.org/index.html) which assists with the funding of the tournament and providing scholarships.  The tournament and foundation pay tribute to former Spain Park High School golfer Bradley Johnson.  Johnson was a very talented golfer who was killed in an automobile accident in 2006 when he was 17.  One of his many career highlights was finishing runner-up in the 2005 U.S. Junior Amateur. 

The 2012 installment featured 15 of the state's top golf teams.  Conner Smith of Spain park took the individual title with a 3 under par 141 in the two-day tournament, while the Spain Park team won the fourth Bradley Johnson Memorial Tournament in six years with an 18 stroke margin over second place Vestavia Hills.



The winning team from Spain Park High School



Teams on the practice range.




Greens Update

The greens are recovering very well from aerification.  The picture below was taken on Thursday morning.  They are still a little bumpy and only rolling in the 8 1/2 to 9 range, but they are making huge strides every day.  We will continue to work the height of cut down as they progress.

Spring Greens Aerification

We began our spring greens aerification on March 5, one week ago today.  We were blessed with good weather for most of the week and things went very well.  As we do most years, we tweaked the process a little this year...

We started out by core aerifying with .5" inside diameter tines on a 1.60" by 1.87" spacing, which allowed us to remove approximately 6.59% of the surface area of the greens.

  a green immediately after core aerification and cleanup

Following the core cleanup, we topdressed the greens very heavy and brushed them one time with a pull behind brush.  After that we aerified again, with .5" solid tines this time, on a 2" by 2.5" spacing, which impacted approximately 3.93% of the surface area.  We were able to achieve over 4.5" of depth with the solid tines, which allowed us to create channels 2" deeper into the greens profile than we did with the coring tines.  The picture above was taken following the solid tine aerification.

Following the solid tine aerification, we used shop brooms to filter the sand down into the channels that were created.  Filling the channels with sand helps the soil retain air space, which is important in the movement of air, water, and gases in the soil profile.

After we finished hand-brooming greens, we made a pass over them with the pull behind brush to help even the sand on the surface.  We are very pleased with the finished product!

Twenty Eleven Video

The Twenty Eleven video made its debut at the annual Greystone Employee Luncheon yesterday to rave reviews! Here it is for all to see... Enjoy!



#18 Project Completion (almost!)

We were blessed with good weather the past 17 days, which played a huge roll in us completing the project as quickly as we did.  The cart path has been replaced, the irrigation lines have been repaired, and all the sod work has been completed.  We will leave the ropes up to keep cart traffic off until the ground firms up and the sod knits together.  The area will play as "ground under repair" for the next couple of months or so.  Also, we will be topdressing the area several times this summer to help smooth it out.

We are very grateful to have this completed!  Thank you for the patience that you extended us throughout this project!

sod being layed and irrigation lines being repaired

Kevin putting the finishing touches on the cart path

the dirt pile in the woods to the left is in the process of being removed

looking like a golf hole again!

#18 Project Update (Friday afternoon)

Most of the backfilling and grading is now complete and almost all of the fairway has been re-sodded.  Early next week, our goal will be to complete the sod work and replace the sections of cart path that we had to remove to replace the pipe.  Also, we will be doing a lot of touch up on the sod that we put in the fairway as most of it was laid very quickly Tuesday afternoon in an effort to beat the rain.  The plastic that you see in the picture below was put down this afternoon in an effort to keep the area in the rough that we still have to sod as dry as possible with heavy rain forecasted for tomorrow.  The hole has been playing as a par 5 again since Wednesday afternoon.

#18 Project Update (Wednesday morning)

The connection of the new pipe to the existing pipe was made yesterday afternoon.  We ended up replacing 240' feet of pipe.  Upon completion of the tie in, we backfilled the upper portion of the trench in order to establish a temporary cart path.  We will continue with backfilling the trench today and possibly begin sodding on the lower end this afternoon.

#18 Project Update (Sunday afternoon)

Late yesterday afternoon, we discovered that we will need to replace 2 more sections (40') of pipe.  Those 2 sections will extend us past the cart path, which means that we will now have to remove approximately 35' of the path and re-pour it when finished.  We will also now have to contend with the irrigation main line as well.  We are hopeful that we will be able to complete the pipe installation by late tomorrow afternoon and begin backfilling the trench with dirt and cleaning up immediately afterwards.

a view from inside the pipe of some of the cracks along the top

180' of new pipe has been installed thus far

#18 Project Update (Friday evening)

We have made a lot of progress in the last 2 days.  We now have 120' of the new pipe installed, which leaves us 60' - 80' to go before we can tie back in to good pipe.  The pipe is getting deeper again as we proceed to the upper end of the fairway.  We are hopeful that we will dodge any heavy rain tonight and be able to continue working throughout the weekend, in the frigid weather.  If all goes well, we should finish installing the pipe either late Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning.  Then we will begin cleaning up and putting everything back together.

#18 Project Update (Thursday morning)

We did not have to replace the last 2 sections of pipe by the lake, which was a huge relief.  They were a little out of round, but were not cracked.  Tying in was a bit challenging due to the slight differences in shape, but we were able to get it done.  At the end of the day yesterday(Wednesday), we had installed the first 20' section and dug back the next 2 sections of pipe.  Things should go much quicker now that the tie in is complete.  We should have a much better idea how much longer that the project will take by the end of the day today.

a view of part of the old pipe crushed and clogged with mud

a pic of the outfall and all of the mud that has migrated into the lake from the pipe

the existing pipe that we tied in to, lined with mud in the bottom

a shot from near the end of the day yesterday

Drainage Repair Project on #18

Given the window of opportunity, with dry weather forecasted for the next week plus, we made the decision to start the replacement of the failed drainage pipe on #18 this week.  The uncertainties of what type of weather that we will have in early March, when we are closed for aerification, was a major factor in the decision

We will be replacing approximately 200' of 36" drainage pipe that is badly damaged.  The damage to the pipe is what created the large sinkhole by the lake on #18.  An outside contractor will be doing the work, with assistance from the maintenance staff.  Due to uncertainties in pipe depth, etc. it is difficult to predict precisely how long the project will take, but we estimate that it will take anywhere from 1-2 weeks to complete. 

For both the expedition of the project and the safety of the workers, we have decided to play the hole as a par 3 while work is being done.  Please check with the golf shop for how that impacts posting your score.  Thanks in advance for your patience and understanding!

the initial step of removing the existing sod began yesterday

New Staff Member

We are pleased to welcome Brian Morrow to the staff.  He comes to us from Colorado Golf Club in Parker, Colorado, where he has served as the First Assistant Superintendent for the past 5 years.  We are excited to have him on the team!  You can check out his complete bio on the "Staff" page of the blog.

Welcome to Twenty-Twelve!!!

The new year welcomes us with a fresh cold shot of chilling temperatures.  Temps on the golf course this morning were as low as 24.  Please check with the Pro Shop for any questions on delays as we enter the depths of winter here at The Legacy.