All Good Things Must Come To An End

Wednesday, July 1st, marks my official last day at Georgia National. In case you have not heard, I have accepted the superintendent position at Healy Point Country Club in Macon. 

I have very mixed emotions about this move. On one hand I am super excited about my new opportunity in Macon. I am moving to a great Country Club with a great golf course. The staff and membership there are awesome. On the other hand, I am leaving a golf course that I have poured my life into for the last five and a half years. 

Georgia National was my first superintendent job on bentgrass greens. It was the course where I was working when both of my children were born (luckily I wasn't working while they were being born). Georgia National will always hold a special place in my heart. 

I have seen a lot of great things happen at Georgia National while I was here. There have been a lot of struggles over the years, but there have been some really great times as well. 

While I was here I have had the opportunity to work with some great people. Terry O'Leary gave me a shot as his assistant and I am truly thankful for that. I learned a great deal from him during our time at the Nat together.  I have had three assistants in my time as superintendent and they were all great guys. I never had to worry about leaving the course in their hands. But, the true backbone of the golf course is the maintenance staff. The super and assistant can plot and plan all they want to, but it takes a great team to execute the plan. I believe we have always had a great team. Even when some of the guys left, someone else always seemed to step up. Every compliment I have ever gotten on course conditions should have gone to the crew and I always tried to give them all of the credit. 

The membership at Georgia National has always been very supportive of me as well. I truly appreciate you all standing behind me even when things went a little sideways every now and then. We always seemed to make it through and you all always seemed to understand. Thank you all for that. That makes our job easier when we have a supportive membership. 

I have truly enjoyed my time here as assistant and superintendent. I always think a great measuring stick of a superintendent is at the end of the day asking if the course is better than when you started. I can't say whether Georgia National is a better course today than it was when I started, but I can say without a doubt I am a better superintendent today than I was when I started. That is all because of a great membership, leadership team, and most of all the best maintenance staff I could ever ask for. 

Thank you and I will miss you all. 

The Reinvention is Underway

The clubhouse reinvention started last week at Georgia National. The inside bathrooms have been gutted and are awaiting all new insides. The company moved on today and started work on the media wall. Once we are complete, it should give us a real WOW factor in our clubhouse. 

Heavy rains and flooding

Over the last week we have had a little over 4" of rain. On Sunday we had 1.2" and it was heavy. With the ground being fully saturated, this rain didn't have anywhere to go. Here are a few pictures from around the course on Sunday afternoon. 

When the bottom on #8 flooded, it washed out a section of cart path. There is a pipe problem and we have had someone out to look at it. As soon as we can get some help from Mother Nature, we are going to get the pipe and path replaced. 

Getting Aggressive On Greens

Today we continued our recovery process from aerification. After we aerify, the grass blades tend to get fat and lay over. We got aggressive today and started curing this. We mowed greens this morning. Then we lightly topdressed to help them get back to smooth and firm. After our topdressing, we verticut the greens in 2 directions. This helped to stand up the leaf blades that were laying over. 

It also helped work that sand down into the canopy. Then we brushed the greens to finish working the sand into the canopy and stand the leaf blades straight up. 

Tomorrow we will mow again and then spray our growth regulator on the greens to help slow the vertical growth. 

Here was our finished product today after a little water. 

Another Successful Aerification

We finished aerifying our greens this week. We timed it perfect with the weather by getting some good rain today after we wrapped up all of the topdressing and dragging of the sand. Hopefully this process will set us up for another good year on the greens. Here's to good weather to heal them up and get them firm and fast again in no time. 

We started out by punching the greens. 

Then we lined up the blowers to clean the debris from the top of the surface and out of the holes to maximize the amount of new sand we could get back into the holes. 

Here is a section that is in the process of being blown clean. 

Then we topdressed the greens and drug the sand in. 

Here is the finished product. We punched a lot of holes and put a lot of new sand back into the greens. All in all, it was a very successful process. 

Time To Punch The Greens...

Well, it's that time again. Time to aerify greens. This is a process that no one hates worse than the golf maintenance staff, but it is something that MUST be done. Here is a link to an article that explains it a little better. 

http://golf.about.com/od/golfcourses/a/aerification.htm

We are starting the process Monday after lunch on the front side and hopefully we will be done aerifying, sanding, dragging sand, cleaning, and fertilizing before the rain moves in on Thursday. This would be great timing. 

Plugging Out Poa

With Bentgrass greens, one of the worst weeds to have a problem with is Poa Annua (Annual Bluegrass). There is not a cost effective chemical control on the market for removing Poa from Bentgrass. For this reason, we have to remove it as we spot it or it will spread quickly and be an even larger problem. 

I like to pick it out if we catch it small enough, or plug it out if it is too large to pick. Here are some pictures of each way. 

We had to remove a few spots today from #1 green. With aerification coming up next week, we wanted to remove it to keep from transplanting it in other areas of the green with the aerifier. 

We like to dot it with paint to count how many plugs we will need. 

One of these spots was small enough to pick out with a pocket knife. There are still several larger spots that will have to be plugged in this area. 

After it is out, we mend the edges like a big ball mark and topdress with sand. 

Here is a larger spot that had to be plugged out with our hex plugger. 

When picking or plugging, the main thing is to get all of the poa. Here is the new plug from our nursery green that replaced the poa infested plug. We topdressed it with green sand to help with the healing process. 

Mulching the course

We are in the process of mulching all of our beds on the course. We do this around this time of year and then touch them up throughout the year as needed. This is a timely process as we go out and repaint all of the bed edges and then edge them with our bed edger to give them a clean edge to work off of. Then we mulch the area. We are about half way done with the mulching.