Llanerch Golf Course and External Activities

Llanerch had 1.7 inches of rain fall on the course yesterday. We are cleaning up creek beds and green side bunkers as of today. We will finish the fairway bunkers tomorrow. Even with all the rain, we do have carts available at 8:00am. See you on the course!

As you might have noticed, some of the native ares have turned bleach white. The white color is a response to a product we applied to control bermuda in the fescue. Bermuda, the grass most of you play on in Florida, was planted back in the 1970s at Llanerch. The hope was that the bermuda would help in areas where cool season grasses would die in the summer. It never really established itself due to the cold winters. With the execption of a few winters over the last 10 years, we have had much milder winters and hotter summers. This has lead to bermuda encroachment into the fescue dominated native areas.  The bermuda then chokes out pretty much any other grass in its way. This product is a chance for me to try to "contain" it spread. I will have more updates and information over the next few weeks.

Today, we will be topdressing greens to help drainage and smooth the surface. We will also be preparing some areas in the rough for some sod that were damaged due to cart traffic . I have had many people ask me when are we going to aerify greens. I will not be aeifying any greens aggressively until AFTER Member -Member Tournament. That means we will get started some time after September 23rd. I will aerify tees in the next couple of weeks. I plan to aerify fairways in the first week of October.

More rain. It feels like I have been writing that same description of the weather in most of the updates this summer! Yesterday, Llanerch received  another 2 inches of rain. The bunkers are going to take a couple days to be fixed from all the water damage. I glad to report that after close to ten years from when they were originally rebuilt, they still completely drain out!  As some of you might not know, the bunkers also have a protective fabric that was installed all along the surfaces of the bunkers when they were rebuilt. The fabric reduces how much sand is washed and keep the soil base from mixing with the white sand. On a day like this, it continues to remind me how well these bunkers were constructed by our contractors. On another note, carts are allowed started at 8:00am today.

I took a quick ride up to Boston this weekend to assist in the course maintenance for the Untied States Amateur. The event is being held at The Country Club at Brookline where I was employed in the mid-1990's. I would like to personally thank Golf Course Superintendent William Spense for having me play a very small roll in presenting the course. The course is in fabulous shape! Mr. Spense and his Assist Superintendents have much to be proud of!

Just when the course started to dry out, it rained again! This time we got over 1.7 inches of rain. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the first round of the Senior Member-Guest tournament yesterday. Today, the course was just dry enough to get the second round in! We are busy fixing some minor wash outs of sand in bunkers and trying to catch up on mowing the course. We had to skip rolling greens today because of the rain but plan to roll this weekend to give members a smoother and faster surface. Enjoy your weekend!