Breaking The Cycle

Over the years we have had many construction and or renovation projects on the golf course and the one thing we have always been short on was time.  In the past things have always been forced into a small time frame that best meets the needs for the course to be playable at all times. We are an extremely busy private Country Club that does more rounds in a year than some of our surrounding public golf courses. This high demand for golf has pushed us into a corner in some of our past projects that did not turn out as well as they should have.

This cycle is now being broken and the culture of the club needs to follow as well.  With our latest project of re-grassing the putting green we are approaching this with a much different view than before.  We will be doing things on a time schedule that best fits the agronomic health of the turf, not a golf schedule of events to be ready for.

This can be best described by what is taking place with the fumigation process at the putting green. The normal fumigation timeline takes between 7-10 days to complete based on soil temperatures. After closely monitoring the soil temperatures we could have ended the fumigation on the seventh day, but I decided with everything that is at stake with the success of this project the fumigation was allowed to go for another day and a half.  This decision was based on what will allow us to have the most success with this project moving forward. If it means extending the fumigation timeline and delaying the eventual re-seeding of the putting green than so be it. We all want this re-grassing to be a success, so why should we not set ourself up for success rather than failure.

Today wewill begin the re-grading of the green in preparation of the seeding process. We will be using the pea gravel layer below the mix as our guide for the final grade above.  If all goes according to plan we should be able to have the green with a final grade on it by tomorrow and seed will be sown immediately following.

The weather forecast looks good for at least the next week, so germination should be achieved beginning five days from planting. Exciting times are just ahead of us, I hope you enjoy watching the grass grow as much as I will.