Morning Photos

I have been asked by several people why there are some thin areas in the zoysia on #8 fairway. The main reason this area struggled coming out of the spring is due to the fact it is in the low and it gets a lot of runoff from the surrounding areas above the golf hole. Another one of the reasons the zoysia has struggled in this area is from lack of sunshine and heat. It was set back originally by the moisture and cold temperatures in the winter and then recovery has been rather slow due to the shade.

Here is a picture of one of the bridges that we staind this week. We hope to have all the others completed by next week.

An early morning photo of #1 green on Friday.

Another early morning photo of #1 green on a beautiful cool and crisp 57 degree morning.

Weekly Update

On Tuesday we received about .5" of rain. It was a good slow and steady rain and didn't cause too many washouts in the bunkers or make the course conditions very wet for a long period of time. Here is an update of what has been going on this week. We have been having a great week and have been getting a lot of the planned items finished. My staff was able to get another 8 holes solid tined and we only have four more to do on Friday. This is a monthly practice and is very beneficial in helping the greens breathe, water movement, and root development. We are starting on our second time of mowing the rough, tee banks, and green banks. We should be able to get over these areas twice this week without any major setbacks. The bridges on holes #4 and between #7 & #8 were stained this morning. We will hopefully get the other bridges on the back nine finished either Friday or beginning of next week. Native grass spraying is continuing and we are currently working on the last of the remaining holes. I hope to have holes #2, 3, 4, and 5 finished by Friday. That should leave a few remaining holes on the back nine left and maybe some isolated areas on some other holes that we will come back through and touch up as we see them. I will try and get some photos of the finished product on the bridges put up sometime today. Enjoy the beautiful weather and I will see you all soon.

Nice Week Ahead

As I am writing this update I am sitting in my office waiting on the rain to fall . It doesn't look like it is going to be raining for very long, but it looks like it might drop a fair amount of moisture. If the weather man is correct in his predictions we are going to have another great weather week, which will allow us to get several things done this week that we haven't been able to get too. On Monday we were able to get four more greens solid tine (putting clock, #1, #2, and #3). We also were able to get a lot of the rough, tee banks, fairways, and tees mowed. We will continue to work on getting the rough mowed throughout the week. Recently we have been battling a bit of a problem with our irrigation pumping system. We are currently looking into this and have had some representatives from our local distributor and service men out to take a look at it. I will keep everyone up to date. Luckily the weather has been good and we haven't needed it much lately. Other items we are working on this week will be continued spraying of native areas, weed eating bunker edges, staining of bridges, grinding of reels, and a few other items. I hope you all had a great weekend. See you soon.

Heat Maybe??

It looks like we may actually have to endure one day of summer heat today. They are calling for a high around 94 degrees. It will be warm, but it is still a far cry from where we are normally this time of year and I am very thankful for that. We have had a great week and have been able to get a lot of mowing, weedeating, and spraying done. We also were able to get some out of play areas picked up and cleaned up from home construction. These have been areas that we have known about for a while, but just haven't been able to get to them with all the mowing and spraying we have been doing due to the amounts of rainfall. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

What An Awesome Morning

Man if you weren't up before 7 am this morning you missed one of the most beautiful mornings and sunrises you could have asked for. Unfortunately I wish I had my camera to take a picture of it, but I forgot the camera in my office and by the time I got back to get it it was over. We had a pretty good morning today on getting the golf course prepared for play. We mowed greens, tees, and continued on our green banks. The ground has dried up considerably which has allowed us to release carts into the fairways and get a lot of my equipment out and moving. I hope to have all the rough mowed down today for the first time, so that we can start back over on it tomorrow and have it mowed down for the weekend. We are going to be starting again on spraying of weeds in the native areas as soon as my sprayer gets done spraying our monthly fungicide application on our green banks. Hope you all have a great day.

Timely Rains

This was actually a very timely rain for us. The golf course had actually started to dry down quite a bit over the last couple of days. Temperatures have been pleasant, but the humidity levels have been very low. Low humidity levels cause the moisture in the ground to dissipate very quickly, thus causing dry conditions. We received a little over .8" of rain overnight. It has made the golf course rather soft this morning and we are unable to get any mowers or heavy equipment out on it. We are working on getting the bunkers cleaned up and pushed back into place and are doing some other detail work like weed eating bunker edges, edging tee markers, and changing cups. I hope everyone had a great weekend and was able to get out and enjoy the spectacular weather we had. It looks like the temperatures are going to stay pretty steady the rest of the week in mid to upper 80's which should be very pleasant.

More Morning Photos

Just another beautiful photo of #17 with the sprinklers running. I had to water in some fertilizer that was put down on Thursday. We are fortunate in my opinion to have one of the most beautiful holes in golf right here at The Golf Club at Creekmoor.
Greens mower mowing #8 green
Had some Dollar Spot which is a fungus that appears as little brown spots the size of a silver dollar appear on our tees the last couple of days. We applied a fungicide this morning to control this disease.

What A Start To A Day In July

I thought I would post some pictures from early this morning. I haven't put any up of us mowing and getting started in the mornings to show everyone what goes on bright and early in the mornings. Man what a morning it was. Beautiful weather and cool brisk temperatures. You could not ask for anything better in the month of July.

Course Update

Once again "Mother Nature" blessed us with some morning showers. We received a little over .5" of rain in a short amount of time. We were unable to mow fairways and greens due to the wet condtions. We will spend the rest of the day pushing, cleaning, and raking bunkers to get them back in to shape. We also are pushing the envelope, but are trying to get the rough mowed down to try and stay ahead of the growth. We also applied a fungicide, fertilizer, and nutrient pack to the greens. We have had a little outbreak of "black algae" on our greens. The damp moist and humid conditions have been perfect for the development of the algae layer. Our greens also still need to recover a bit from the verticutting that was performed on them the week before. These areas are good areas for the algae to move in due to the weakening of the turf. The chemical application this morning should go a long ways in helping us remedy this situation.

Great Start to The Week

It is the beginning of another week and the weather looks like it is going to continue to be in our favor. We have been receiving some timely rains and cooler temperatures, and you will not hear me complain about any of that in the middle of July. We will be spending the first part of the week getting the bunkers back in place after the 1" plus rain we got on Sunday. We will try and get the rough and fairways mowed downed as soon as it dries out enough to where we can get equipment out on them without making a mess. We will be continuing to spray the native grass areas weather permitting. I hope everyone had a great weekend. I would like to congratulate my assistant Rory O'Donovan on his new addition to his family. He and his wife welcomed in Liam Andrew O'Donovan 7 lbs 10 oz. on Sunday evening. I hope you all have a great week.

Little Drippy This Morning

We received abut .20" of rain this morning. Just enough to make it a little sticky this afternoon with the warm temperatures they are predicting. I won't complain however, cause getting any kind of moisture this time of year is a huge bonus. I was able to get the greens topdressed yesterday to help them continue to heal up after the verticut last week. My staff was also able to stay on top of all the mowing on the golf course and we should be able to get over the rough for a second time by the end of today. We were also able to get holes 9, 8, 7, native sprayed. We will continue to work on this for the next couple of weeks. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Project Update

It looks like we are going to have another heat wave the rest of this week. I guess summer had to come eventually. Here are some updates of on course projects that we have been working on. We were able to get all the fairways aerated and and cleaned up on Tuesday. The zoysia sodding is completed and the new sod should start taking off quickly with the warmer temperatures. We started spraying native grass areas on Wednesday and plan on continuing this process weather permitting until we are finished. This process will take several weeks to complete. I appreciate everyone's patience with this as we try and get it done as quickly as possible. We finally had a good start to the week and were able to get all the rough mowed out by Tuesday evening and were able to start concentrating on some of the other detail items like weed eating, push mowing, and some minor tree work. I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I will see you soon out on the golf course.

Joys of Early Mornings

This is one of the joys of being up early in the morning. These are some of our golf course family here at Creekmoor. Look closely and you will see some deer and wild turkey. We see them every morning about 6 am.