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Post Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Golf Course Update From LRCC GCS I hope everyone is doing well during these trying times. I wanted to touch base and give a quick hello and update on the status of the course here at LRCC. The turf remains dormant in most places as the winter season continues. The onset of cold temps early in the season encouraged the grass to “hibernate” fairly quickly avoiding any winter kill. The roller coaster temps of late have allowed a few areas to “break” dormancy, indicating that when we return to seasonal soil temps, things should green up rather quickly. I cannot wait! The greens have remained frozen within the top 3 inches more this year than in years past. No doubt everyone has most likely noticed how hard the playing surface has been. With that, it has also been hard to change hole locations. But, anytime the greens loosen up, crews are changing locations to try to alleviate foot traffic and ball marks/divots on the playing surface. The future weather forecast shows that temps look to be steadily rising to the mid 40’s to 50’s during the day and upper 30’s at night. This in turn will allow us to regain control of pin placements, and soften the playing surface just a bit. As for the rest of the course, at the time of this writing, it remains saturated from recent rainfall. February has been moderately wet through the first half of the month. I am hopeful this is not a trend that continues as we are in desperate need of “rooting” this spring. Rooting is when the turf roots extend deep into the ground in search for water. This in turn makes the turf more stress tolerant in the warmer months. The past two springs provided too much rainfall so the turf has not had to search for water, eliminating the need for deep rooting and resulting in summer decline and or stressed turf. On the other side of that coin, soil samples from the greens show massive deep roots extending 5 to 6 inches down. I am very pleased that we have made great progress in this area and will continue to amplify root mass growth going into the season. Cultural practices will continue to be moderate this year. There will be more topdressing on the greens to alleviate thatch build up and reduce organic matter. And we will roll them more this year to try and sustain green speed throughout the season. Aerification will be arriving in the beginning of March. This year's aerification will involve ¾ solid tines at a depth of 5 inches followed by amendments and sand. It is my intention to have aerification done quickly and the greens back to exceptional playability in days  not weeks. We are planning to aerify some of our problem tees and fairways as well, as soil compaction is impending growth and survival. Let us now talk about bunkers. Our bunkers are in need of renovation. Most of them have their liner showing. All of them wash out in the rain, bringing the sand down from their faces. And most of them need new drainage. We added sand to quite a few last year only to have the sand washed back to the bottom m