Cold Temperatures Have Arrived

The temperatures have been bouncing all over the board over the last week. We have had times where the highs have been close to 60 and the lows have been in the teens. Pretty common this time of the year as the seasons change. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their families and friends like I did. Nothing is better then being able to spend quality time with your loved ones over the holiday season. The crew here has been staying busy working in the shop during the cold days and out on the golf course when the weather is conducive. The turf is really slowing down its growth which has really altered our mowing schedules. We are still currently mowing the greens about twice a week and have moved to mowing the tees and rough maybe once a week depending on the weather and growth. We also have stayed busy cleaning around #2 green like I mentioned last week along with the rock project along the cart paths. We also decided to go ahead and winterize the on course restroom facilities for the winter. Some have asked why we did this since we had installed heaters in them . These buildings are not insulated and all the water heaters and piping is in the ceiling of these facilities. It is a little dangerous to try and keep these heated year round without insulation in them. If for whatever reason the power would go out or one of the heaters would quit working we would have a major issue on our hands. So to be safe we decided to try and extend them being open a little longer this year, but ultimately to have them winterized when we started to see temperatures reach the freezing points like we have had.

Turkey Day Already??

Man where has the time gone this year? I can't believe we are already the day before Thanksgiving. It seems like it was just yesterday that the temperatures were hot and the humidity was high and the stress levels in the maintenance facility were at an all time high. I don't miss that part of the year at all! Just a little update as to what has been going on this week here at Creekmoor. We have officially shut down the on course restrooms for the winter season. Temperatures are suppose to get down around the low teens this week and we simply didn't want to take a risk of having a pipe freeze on us. The restrooms will remain closed until the spring time. We have also removed the water coolers and stations around the course like we usually do as they turn into ice blocks in the colder weather. The ball washers have also been brought in to prevent them from freezing and cracking the cast metal. We have left four of them out and have put a anti-freeze solution in them to allow you to wash your ball. It is windshield washer fluid so please be careful handling your ball if you wash it. The crew has also been working on clearing the underbrush around two green. This will hopefully help establish some air flow during the summer months across the surface of that green. I hope everyone has a great and very Happy Thanksgiving. My family and I are so thankful for the opportunity that you the members and Cooper Land Development have given me to serve as your golf course superintendent. I am also very thankful for a great staff that works hard and truly cares about providing a championship golf course for its members and players. Safe travels to everyone and have a great week!

Fall Weather Continues

Cold and frosty mornings and a slow warm-up have been an regular occurrence over the last couple days. Temperatures have gotten down below freezing at night and have struggled to get reach their highs of the 50's in time for much to golf to be played. However it looks like this weekend is going to be nice and should allow for some good golf to played. My staff is continuing to stay busy on projects, a little mowing around on the golf course, and cleaning and raking the bunkers after the rains. We continued to work on installing some stones along cart paths in the area where the traffic has caused us problems. Also we have started to do some cleanup in and around #2 green by clearing out the undergrowth and old weeds that grew during the season this year in hopes of increasing our air flow for the green. We are planning to mow greens and tees today as soon as the frost lifts. I hope everyone has a great weekend and is able to get out and enjoy the warmer weather.

Frosty Mornings

Frosty mornings have started to be a pretty regular occurrence over the last couple of weeks. The temperatures have started to cool off and the night time lows have been lingering around the high 30's low 40's range, which has really slowed the growth of the turf. We are down to mowing greens about 2-3 times, mowing tees about once a week depending on the weather and temperature conditions. The bentgrass on the greens and tees has really slowed down and thus our mowing schedules have as well. This week we are in the process of repairing the bunkers after the 2.5" of rain that we received last Friday. We should have these completed by the end of today. If you play golf this week you might see double the paint dots around our collars on our greens. We are in the process of shrinking the collar areas down and changing them to 26" width from the 30" width they were before. We are doing this due to the fact that one of our new mowers is a 26" mower and will allow us to mow the collars in one pass instead of having to make 2 passes. My hope is that this will help alleviate some of the mechanical stress in these areas when the summer stress sets in during July and August. We will continue to mark the collar widths through out the year to help them stay a consistent width all the way around. In the coming weeks we hope to begin some drainage work in some fairways mainly. #13, 6, along right side of #10, and 16. The rock work will continue along cart paths on #10, 11, and 12 as the weather permits. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or concerns either by email or by phone.

Pictures of Projects Around Golf Course

#8 green where the ground had settled from construction we cut the sod off and leveled this area so golf balls wouldn't get trapped in an uneven and settled lie.

Newly seeded nursery green with the winter cover pulled off.

Rock work along cartpath on #11.

Warm and Windy

Our staff here at Creekmoor has shrunk in size, but we haven't slowed down any on the golf course. My staff has continued to work hard and so me why they are the best golf staff around. Often times I don't mention them as often as I should, but these guys are the ones that make me look good. The growth pattern for the turf grass has slowed down tremendously over the last week or so with the cooler weather we were having. Our mowing schedules have altered according. We are mowing the greens about every other day right now on average. My staff and I are keeping our eye on it and we mow the greens when we start to see the turf getting tall and not giving a good smooth ball roll, which is about every other day right now. Our tee boxes and rough are getting mowed once a week as well. We have continued to work on the rocking project around the cart paths that get an extreme amount of traffic on holes #11 and #12. The nursery green continues to grow and fill in very nicely after we re-seeded it. It was moving at a very rapid pace prior to the cool weather last week, but hopefully the cover we have will help it to continue to fill in and grow somewhat over the winter months. Once spring is here the bentgrass will really take off and it should fill in very nicely and quickly. Another project we have been working on is leveling some of the step cut areas around the greens where they settled out and have caused an uneven lie for your ball when it rolls into these areas. This is very common after construction and is an ongoing problem. Hopefully I can get some photos for all of you to see along with some of our nursery green today and I will post those later. I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Cooler Week Ahead

It looks like our week is going to be a cool and brisk one. The temperatures have started to lower and the breeze has picked up a little bit causing conditions to be a little cool and brisk. As you can imagine the turf has slowed down significantly over the last week or so. Our mowing schedules as I have mentioned before are on a as needed basis besides the greens. We are still mowing the greens on a regular basis except for Mondays as that is their day of rest. I expect the next week or so our mowing schedule on the greens will start to change and we may go to an every other day schedule depending on the weather and growth. My staff will be switching into project mode in the upcoming weeks. Some of our projects we are going to be working on are rocking of the cart paths, drainage work in fairways, tree work around some creek areas, and installing a few more irrigation heads in the roughs. We have one more fertilizer application to make on our roughs for the winter. This should take place later this week or the following week depending on when the product shows up at the maintenance facility. As most of you already now from our monthly newsletter we will be going into our winter cart rules starting on November 15th. The rule consist of restricting the carts to paths only for the winter months. This is done to help protect our zoysia grass from any winter kill and hopefully minimize any expense next spring on sod to fix fairway areas. Continual cart traffic on the dormant turf can open the turf for winter damage. We have had pretty good luck since implementing this program and have minimized our damage repairs in the spring. I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween.