On The Course April 2nd, 2011

I have been out on the course this morning evaluating our snow melt and getting some projects organized for next week. Above is a picture I took of the middle right of #6 green. As you can see the turf underneath the covers looks pretty good. Over the past couple of weeks we have been able to keep an eye on what has been going on under the covers and have a pretty good feel for what the greens are going to be looking like when we pull the covers off. I have looked under the covers on every green in areas I would think we could have issues and they all look similiar to the picture above.

Fairways and tees are looking pretty good also but there is some ice damage areas on some fairways and a little snow mold breakthrough on some tees. The picture to the right is of a spot on #6 fairway and is 3 foot square area that has some ice damage. This is a settle area that collects water and when the snow melted and refroze it caused this turf damage. There are several areas throughout the golf course fairways that have some ice damage. Most of these areas will be aerified and seeded when the fairways dry out enough and we are able to get on them.

We are looking at the weather forecast very closely right now with another system moving in later in the day on Sunday, April 3rd. The computer models are showing the heavier moisture is starting to move farther to the north and most of the moisture will miss the Twin Cities area. As most people know the weather can change at anytime but we are hopeful not to get a lot of moisture from this next system. If we are able to get a couple nice warmer days next week we will be able to get the green covers off and store them in the barn.

Above is a picture of the crew working on chipping some branches from some tree trimming this past week. With most of the snow melting we will be able to get a lot of these areas cleaned up and ready for play.