KGA Senior Team Championship

What a great weekend we had here at Creekmoor this past week. The weather was fantastic and the golfing conditions continue to improve after the aeration. This week we have a pretty busy beginning to the week. We are hosting the KGA Senior Team Championship Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We will be busy in the mornings prepping the golf course for this event and trying to stay up on the mowing ahead of their 8am start times. The greens are continually improving each day and are healing up rather quickly. The greens we had the aerifier damage on are a little slower in the healing process, but I am confident they will be almost completely healed by the end of this week into the beginning of next week. The plugs in the rough continue to slowly melt away. Hopefully by the end of the week you will not be able to see very many of them. After the championship we will be giving the greens a nice little topdressing to finish off filling the holes in and continue to help them smooth out. We have started on our over seeding in the roughs areas and still have a couple more holes to finish. After we get done with that we will begin on some native areas that are thin or never really got established after construction. I hope everyone had a great weekend. See you soon on the golf course.

Overseeding and Greens Recovery

This is a picture of one of our tractors and our overseeder. We started overseeding today in some of the high traffic areas and areas where the grass has been slower to establish. We don't have a lot of areas so this process should go pretty quickly. We are seeding with an 100% mix of turf type tall fescues.
I am pretty happy with how far the greens have come in just eight days. They are recovering from the aeration nicely.
Here is a photo of one of the greens that got damaged by the aerifier. It is recovering, but all the greens that had damage are about a week behind. These areas will go away, but it will just take some time and good growing weather for them to heal.

Greens Recovery

I hope everyone had a great weekend. The greens here at Creekmoor are recovering rather well and rather quickly. I know the areas we had some mechanical damage will take a little bit more time and care, however I feel pretty good about where we are at right now. We have started to mow the greens and pick up the access sand. We will continue this process for the next couple of days in hopes of getting our walk mowers back out for the weekend. We finally finished aerifying the rough this morning. It is going to be an ongoing practice of my staff mowing and rain that will help break down the plugs in the rough areas. I know this isn't the most ideal situation however it is a very important practice for us in the management practices we do and will hopefully help us to stay at a high level of maintenance here at Creekmoor. Later in the week we will start some of our over-seeding process in some of the thinner areas in the rough and in some native areas.

Aeration Complete

We finally finished up aeration yesterday around 4pm. It was a very busy couple of days, but well worth the work. We had great weather and for the most part we had no major set backs. We did however have some damage done to a few of the greens from an aerator malfunction. These areas will take a little longer to heal then the other greens. I would like to apologize to everyone for this setback and ask for everyone's patience. I don't anticipate it being a substantial amount of extra time to heal, although it will require some TLC from my staff. I posted a picture of the damage below in my Thursday post. We should finish up aerating the rough today sometime. I know the plugs laying around is not ideal, but once again I would like to ask for your patience with this. The plugs should start disappearing over the next week or so as we continue to mow and chop them up. Hopefully over the weekend we will be able to get caught back up on our mowing schedule with the weather permitting and as the plugs dry. We can't mow until the plugs dry out or it causes a huge muddy mess. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Hopefully my beloved Wildcats can get lucky and pull out a win, although that is highly unlikely.

Pictures from Aeration

Had a spectator watching what we were doing. He had to climb up the tree to get a better look!!

Unfortunately I had one of my aerifiers malfunction during the aeration. We had already completed five greens before we noticed the damage. We were able to get the problem fixed, but unfortunately there are five greens (12, 3, 5, 7) that will take a little longer to heal. One of the aerification tines drug a little bit instead of picking up out of the ground totally.
Here we are dragging the dry sand into the holes.
Picture of the holes after the plugs have been picked up by hand and the green then has been topdressed.
One of the aerifiers we used on our greens and tees.
Plugs that are left behind after the aerator goes through.

Congrats to the 2009 Golf Club at Creekmoor Club Champions

I would like to congratulate the 2009 Golf Club at Creekmoor Club Champions. In the ladies division Ms. Sheri Rehmer captured her first ever Golf Club at Creekmoor ladies title. In the senior division Mr. Mark Dunlap won in thrilling fashion by breaking a three way tie on hole #18. Last but not least congratulations to Mr. Kevin Handlan on his consistentaly solid play in the open divison on his way to capturing the title. I hope all of the competitors had a great weekend of golf. My staff and I are gearing up for our fall aeration beginning tomorrow. It looks like the weather is going to cooperate and it should be some ideal weather conditions to aerify. Today we are trying to get rough and green banks mowed out as far as we can so that my staff can concentrate on aerification the next two days. We were also able to get fairways, tees, and approaches mowed as well. We applied a fungicide to the greens to control some cool weather disease (Dollar Spot) that we were seeing on them. I will try and update you all with some pictures during aerification the next two days.

Club Championship Preparations

We have continued to have a great week here at Creekmoor. My staff has been working hard and the weather has been cooperating, which has allowed us to stay on our normal mowing schedule. We also were able to get all the starter fertilizer put out on the rough and get the tees fertilized as well in preparation for next weeks aeration. I have been gone the past two days attending an Leadership Academy at the national GCSAA headquarters. I was selected to attend by my local chapter and feel very honored that they choose me. I learned a lot of new things and hope that I will use them and continue to grow as a leader in all aspects of my life. We are looking forward to this weekend as it is our Club Championship weekend. The golf course should be in great shape and hopefully the weather will cooperate. We have a few chances of rain over the weekend, but hopefully they will hold off. My staff and I will be putting the final touches on the golf course today for the weekend in preparation for the Championship. I wish everyone good luck and I hope everyone plays well.

Great Holiday Weekend

I hope everyone enjoyed their Holiday weekend as much as I did. We were blessed once again with beautiful cool and dry weather. This week should be a typical week here at Creekmoor for the turf care staff. We will hopefully get back on our regular mowing schedule by the end of today weather permitting. We have a chance of rain showers later today into tomorrow, so we will have to see what happens. We are also applying our starter fertilizer to the rough in preparations for our over seeding and aerification in the rough that is coming up next week. Also today we are spot spraying broad leaf weeds in the roughs and fairways. The broad leaf weeds have just exploded with all the cool moist weather we have been having. Some of you who have been playing over the weekend will notice some areas in the fairways that look like something has been scratching or digging. These are areas where either skunks, turkeys, or raccoons have been digging trying to eat the grub worms. We didn't pre-treat our fairways for grubs this year in a cost saving move, however we are spot treating these areas and should hopefully keep them under check. If it gets out of control this year we may have to re-evaluate our application for next year. With all the woodlands and open space we have we are a prime candidate for this type of activity. If I get some time later today I will try and get out and take a picture of these areas and get it posted on the blog.

Productive Week

It has been another very productive and tremendous weather week. My staff and I have been able to stay on our regular mowing schedule for the week without any rain interruptions. The spots in the collars that were stressed due to all the prep work for the Member/Guest have started to slowly heal up. They will take a little time, but they should continue to heal in this cooler weather. We also started on some over seeding in some of the outer native areas behind newly constructed homes. This is going to be on going over the next week or so as we work towards green, tee, and rough aeration (September 15 & 16). Once the rough is aerified after the Club Championship (September 12 & 13) we will begin over seeding the thin areas in the primary rough. We don't have a lot of over seeding to do, so it should be a pretty quick process this year. It is going to be a busy holiday weekend here at Creekmoor. I hope everyone has a chance to get out and enjoy it. What more could you ask for great weather and college football starting. It is my favorite time of the year.

A Great Weekend

We had a tremendous weekend here at Creekmoor. I hope all of you that played in the Member/Guest had a great time. We were blessed with great weather and Mother Nature held off the rain. This week we are going to be slowing down on the amount of mowing in the fairways. This is because as the days get shorter and temperatures get cooler the zoysia grass starts to slow down on growing and eventually goes dormant. We want to have the zoysia a little taller then normal going into it's dormancy. This will help the zoysia store up carbohydrates in the taller leaf tissue thus helping it to survive over the winter dormancy. So we will be mowing the zoysia at .750 instead of .500. Also we double spiked the greens and solid tined the collars this morning. After all the foot traffic and mechanical traffic from my equipment in preparation for the member the guest, the greens needed to be opened up to let them breathe and relive some of the compaction. We will be back on our normal schedules of mowing in the roughs and around the greens and tees. If temperatures stay as they are, here in the next couple of weeks we will begin our aeration of the rough and start on our overseeding of some native areas and rough areas on an as needed basis. I appreciate everyone's positive comments on the blog. Please feel free to let me know if you think I can improve it or make it more informative. Again thank you to all for the positive comments during the Member/Guest! It was a team effort, so if you see my crew please express it to them as well. Without them I would not be able to survive and accomplish what we do.