Update

We received .5inches of rain on Saturday morning bringing our year-to-date total to 33.5inches, which is behind last year but our rains this year have come when we needed it though Saturdays are definately not ideal.  We have had our share of Saturday rain events over the past few months.  The golf course is doing well.  The rough is a hot button topic this time of year.  We are mowing as fast as we can, as much as we can everyday.  July, August and September are when our course really bares its teeth when the rough gets as thick as it is now.  We had 3 successful greens aerifications this year.  It is an important process for the health of the short term and long term health of the greens.  Thank you for understanding that this is a necassary process.

A litttle more rain and a big tree.

This 75 foot tree fell down Wednesday night during the thunderstorms that blew through.  Another 9/10ths inches of rain.

Rainy Saturday

So far today we are at 2.95 inches of rain, bringing our year-to-date to 31 inches.

Greens aerification

We aerified all the greens today and started the cleanup process.  We will finish cleaning, rolling and topdressing tomorrow.

Verticutting fairways

These pictures are of the fairway vericutting we performed in June.  It is a 3 step process.
Step1: verticut the fairway 2 directions to affect the grain growing in different directions.  The grain of the grass generally goes downhill which on one fairway may actually be multiple different directions depending on where the slope faces.
Step 2: mow the fairways to cut off the grass that was stood up by the verticutter
Step 3: blow the debri off the fairway and they are ready for play

Fairway verticutter (look at all that material)
The material you see flying out of the reels is thatch.  This needs to be thinned out to maintain firm fairways and healthy plant growth.

This view is of the verticut fairway next to the unverticut fairway.  

Aerification August 5th and 6th

Golf Course Maintenance

We are aerifying the greens on Monday and Tuesday.  This aerification will mimic the one we did in June.  Greens aerification is extrememly important for the overall health of the greens.  The turf on greens is under and extreme amount of stress.  Aerification allows for improved air and water movement withing the soil profile which makes for healthier roots which in turn makes for a healthier plant allowing it to better handle the daily stress we put on them.  Mowing grass at less than 1/8 inch as we do daily inherently causes stress, but once you add foot traffic, disease pressure, shade(which bermuda hates) insect pressure and our hot humid Texas summers into the mix, it makes for a stressed out plant that is using all the energy is has just to survive.  We are also going to verticut the fairways as we did in June.  Verticutting the fairways will help make a tighter lie and make the fairways less prone to scalping this time of year.

Afternoon Thunderstorms

Friday afternoon about 12:30 we received a couple inches of heavy rain in a short amount of time resulting in washed out bunkers that are full or water.  On top of the 3 inches we had earlier in the week our total for the week is now in the 4-5 inch range.  We are thankful for the rain though we are behind on mowing so when we are able to get the mowers out next week there is going to be a lot of grass.  Fairways 5 and 10 look odd because we were halfway through mowing them when it started raining and could not finish.  As always we will get everything back into shape as quickly as we can.