On The Course June 30th

Kathy and her Friday group on the Executive Course

We are mowing and rolling greens today. We have an 8:30am Firecracker Shotgun today. Brandon will be setting pin locations today and we will be handwatering after the shotgun is finished. We should hit a high temperature of close to 90 degrees again today. We are looking at a slight chance of thunderstorms later tonight but it will be real spotty. We will be mowing the Executive Course once the Championship Course is prepared for the tournament. The mosquitos have been out in full force so please remember to apply bug spray while standing on the pavement as it will damage the grass.

I have had a few questions on our typical mowing schedule over the past couple of days. We are a very busy club and we try to manage our mowing schedule to fit in with what we have scheduled each week. We make periodic adjustment to the mowing schedule depending on agronomic conditions, playability of the golf course and weather. Typically we mow and roll greens Tuesday (Women's and Men's League), Thursday (Women's League), Friday (Busy Day), Saturday (Men's League and Busy Day). We monitor our clippings on the greens each day and that will dictate the necessity for mowing greens the following day. Since we mow greens Thursday, Friday and Saturday we don't see the clippings accumulating in the baskets of the greens mowers and therefore we only Roll greens on Sundays. Mondays are a day we typically are applying fertilizers and pesticides on greens and may only mow or roll that day depending on growth rates/ clipping production. Wednesday with Junior Golf on both the front nine and back nine we sometimes only have enough time to mow or roll greens. Again, this is a typical schedule but Mother Nature will dictate some adjustments to this schedule. The high temperatures and dry conditions we are experiencing will dictate how much stress we can put on the greens and affect our mowing and rolling schedule. We post what our mowing and rolling schedule is daily near the locker rooms but if you have any specific questions regarding our mowing and rolling procedures please contact me directly.

On The Course June 29th

We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. We are expecting another hot and busy day. Sheldon is working on our "Friday" rough mow this morning. This is where he mows a lot of the high play areas and makes a couple passes around each fairway to make sure everything is set for the weekend. Tees are being mowed today and we are not mowing fairways today. With the forecasted heat and stress that we saw on a couple of them yesterday we changed our schedule and will be mowing them again on Monday.

The crew will be working on some push mowing and string trimming tasks later this morning. We will be out hand watering areas of the course later this afternoon. The humidity drop a lot yesterday and we needed to hand water greens and spot water some fairways. We have a long stretch of 90's in the forecast with a chance of a thunderstorm on Saturday.

On The Course July 28th

Today we will be saying goodbye to a long time member of our staff Jason Swift and his dog Amani.  Jason has served as our Irrigation Technician since 2007 and has been an asset to our staff.  Thanks to Jason for all of his hard work and dedication to the course for the last 6 seasons.  Good luck in California Jas.

It is forecasted to be another hot day with temps getting close to 90.  The humidity will dip off as the day goes on which should bring slightly more comfortable conditions.  We are single cutting greens this morning and prepping the Executive Course for the MGA Juniors event going on this morning.  There is also an outside event scheduled for the E9 for later this afternoon.  Brandon will be moving pins this morning and Javier is getting the tees back into shape from yesterdays play.  We will be handwatering areas of the golf course this afternoon as the course begins to dry out.

Thanks to everyone involved for making yesterdays Gopher shotgun a sucess.  It was a lot of fun preparing for the event.

On The Course June 27th

University of Minnesota Goal Line Club Shotgun Today!

 We have a busy day on the course again today with the Juniors this morning and the University of Minnesota Goal Line Club this afternoon. We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. Fairways, collars and approaches are also being mowed. Troy and Brandon will be setting the course up this morning for the tournament. We will be putting out some special flags for the event today and as a University of Minnesota alumni I think they look great.

The crew will be doing some work on the Executive Course later this morning in preparations for the outings we have tomorrow. The next few days look to be very good with a slight chance of thunderstorms later tonight into early tomorrow morning. The heat will be sticking around for the next week with daytime temperatures in the low 90's. We will be watching the course very closely and will be making some agronimic adjustments if the course needs it. With the high temperatures we want to make sure we do not stress the greens too much and create a potential anthracnose situation.

We will be spot watering the golf course throughout the day and will be handwatering greens if necessary.

On The Course June 26th

We have had a pretty nice stretch of weather lately and it looks to continue through the rest of the week. If is almost July and we will be having some warmer weather stretches over the next couple of weeks. It is supposed to be in the low 90's tomorrow with a slight chance of storms moving in for Thursday. We are seeing some rain on the radar this morning in South Dakota heading  this way but should not develop into anything significant.

Yesterday we were able to get all of the greens and fairways sprayed before the Outside event. We were applying fertilizers and fungicides to protect the turf over the next couple of stressful weeks. Brandon was able to get all of the Championship course fairways, Executive course greens and fairways done yesterday before the outside event. Troy sprayed all of the putting surfaces on the Championship course and was also able to get some bunker banks sprayed with fertilizer. Mondays are a really busy day for the crew and we were able to get a lot done.

Greens will be mowed (with groomers) and rolled today. We will be hand watering some greens this morning and working on others into the afternoon. We will be spot watering fairways and approaches this morning checking irrigation heads and making sure the irrigation system is working properly. We are heading into what appears to be a very dry stretch of weather with some warmer temperatures. Brandon will be spraying tees and several fairways this morning. We have adjusted our cultural program on a few of the fairways that consist of predominately peat soil. The peat soil has some built up nutrients and we have not put a granular fertilizer on these fairways for a couple of years. They have always grown more than the clay based fairways and by making this adjustment we have seen a more even growth pattern over the fairways.

We are working on some drainage on #14 to help with an area that has been sitting in water most of the spring. We will be adding drainage pipe and pea rock to the trench lines. We will install a catch basin at the low point that we will utilize until we are able to put a pipe under the path and exit it to the east of #14 fairway. We will be aerifying, seeding and keeping this area roped off for the next couple of weeks.

On The Course June 24th

It is a cool but humid morning on the course.  You can see that there is a descent amount of dew on the grass from last night.  It should shape up to be a very nice day for golf with highs in the mid 80's.  We are rolling greens this morning, raking greenside bunkers, and resetting the course.  We may be hand watering a few greens this afternoon with the high temperatures.

On The Course June 23rd

The golf course was very busy yesterday and we should have a pretty busy weekend. We have some rain on the radar that is heading this way for later this morning. We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. Troy has the crew out early this morning and we should be able to finish getting the course ready before any rain moves into the area. The rain is going to be pretty spotty and we should see some sun on and off today. Sunday is looking like it should be a perfect day.

We have trenched an area on 14 to help drain a constant wet area. We are going to leave the trench lines open until Monday in order to let the saturated soil dry out. We will install some drain tile that will help us manage this area much better. We will be trying to tackle of few of the areas that we have been running our trash pumps on frequently. We will try to keep the disturbance to a minimum but occasionally we will have an open trench.

On The Course June 22nd

Fernando mowing the new seeded fairway on #1 of the Executive Course

 We have received no rain in the past 24 hours!!!! We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. Most of the fine turf areas will be mowed today. Sheldon has been really busy with the rough mower and should be caught up today. Cristian and Carlos mowed most of the rough around greens and tee yesterday and will be touching up a couple areas later this morning. The course still has several areas that are holding water and we will have a couple of holes that will be cart path only. Please watch for the signs and stay on the path on these holes. We will be 90 degree rule on a majority of the course.

Trenching a couple areas on #14 to help with drainage

Jake Mendel with an ACE on #7 of the Executive Course

On The Course June 21st

Root pruning along #1 Fairway

 We seem to have a break in the rain for a couple of days. Maybe we have a new trend starting for us and some of the wet areas of the course will begin to dry out. The greens were dry enough yesterday to get them mowed and cleaned up a little. They are still extremely soft and will take some time and dry weather to get them back to normal. We are mowing and rolling them this morning and they are a lot better today then yesterday. We were able to mow fairways yesterday even though we had some really wet areas. They were getting really long and needed to be mowed. We will have to work on fixing a couple of areas that are still really wet. We have been running trash pumps in areas that we can get the water to move. Some of the areas we are just moving water from one wet area to another. We have a couple of drainage projects planned when we get a reprieve from the rain.

On Monday we rented a pipe puller to pull in some pipe for the bunker irrigation addition on #12. We were also able to root prune a couple of areas of the course where the tree roots affect the finer turf areas. Behind #16 green we were able to drop the vibratory plow blade into the rough area and cut some of the tree roots that are encroaching on the putting surface. We also did a couple areas where tree roots affect the fairways during the summer dry period. We will watch these areas over the next couple of months and document our results.

We have been pumping water out of some of the low areas that do not drain very well

Fairways were mowed yesterday during the break in the rain

 The crew has been working on the bunkers a lot over the past couple of weeks. We seem to be in a pattern of getting one inch or more of rain in every rain event. This washes out the bunker edges and we have to spend a lot of time pushing sand back into the edges and higher spots in the bunkers. We have identified a few more bunkers that we will be replacing sand in this fall and checking the drainage lines.

The crew has been pushing a lot of sand over the past rain events

On The Course June 19th

We received another 1.05 inches of rain overnight and we are looking at a possibility of more storms kicking up later this afternoon. We will keep everyone posted on the conditions of the golf course and when we will be able to open up. We are going to want the greens and fairways to drain off before we allow players back out on the course. The video above shows some of the major issues with the golf course this morning. We are looking at clearing skies and will do what we can to get the course open and ready for play. We will not be mowing or rolling today.

If the pond on #7 drains down enough to get some trash pumps running in some other low areas we will start to clear some water. With the saturated conditions it is difficult to move any water to areas that are already full of water. The course will need some time to dry out and drain off. Check with the Pro shop for continued updates throughout the day.

Thanks to JD and his staff for a great Invitational Tournament.

Congratulations to Scott Peterson and Mark Bourget for winning the Invitational.

With all the rain over the past couple of days we will be Cart Path only and this is not Cart Path Only!!!

Invitational Saturday, June 16th

Cal Franklin adding some entertainment before the first round of the Invitational

We had a great day for golf yesterday! The crew is back out on the course early this morning preparing the course for the final day of the Invitational. We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. They are a little faster than our normal green speed. Fairways, collars and approaches are being mowed this morning. We are expecting spotty showers in the area later this morning and early afternoon. Radar is show some spotty rain in South Dakota.

Brian Scates and his guest Casey Rouse. Note: Team Uniforms for players and caddies!!

Pictured from lef to right: Brent Halweg, Dave Zeman, Chris Zeman and Mario Fabrizio
Mr. Zeman made an ace on #8 during the 3rd round of the Invitational

On The Course June 15th



I know the photo is a little blurry but it is 3:45am. Mowing and rolling greens in the dark.

We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. The course is still a little wet from yesterday's rain event. We received 0.8 inches of rain before the Invitational practice round started. The greens have firmed up nicely overnight and the fairways are drying out a little bit. Still a lot of wet areas throughout the golf course but it looks to be a pretty nice day.

Troy and Brandon are setting pin locations this morning and Jason is working on Tee Service. The bunkers have drained off and the greens mowing crew will get all of the bunkers raked before the 8:00 am shotgun start. We brought the crew in at 3:30am this morning to get the course prepared for the Invitational. We have added lights to a lot of our equipment in order to get some of the work done in the dark. Thanks to all of the Grounds Staff for putting in the extra effort this week.



Shootout qualifiers from the Practice Round.

Thanks to Cal Franklin and TN Marketing for the Invitational Tee Markers.

On The Course June 14th

We are mowing and rolling greens today and preparing the course for the Invitational Practice Round. Fairways, collars and approaches are also being mowed. We are looking at some thunderstorms moving into the area later this morning and are hopeful it will stay to the North. Later this morning we will be pulling tee markers and some of the ropes and stakes. We will have a busy couple of days with the Invitational. We have the crew starting really early and will be mowing in the dark. We have put lights on most of our primary mowers.

Depending on rain events over the next couple of days we could be periodically hand watering some areas of the course. We needed to run a little irrigation on greens this morning so the mowers could see their mowing lines. The wind blew most of the evening and has kept the turf surface pretty dry.

On The Course June 13th

Junior Golf Starts Today!

We are mowing greens with groomers this morning. There is some rain on the radar in western Minnesota and is heading this way for later today. Spotty chances of rain is predicted over the next couple of days. Fairways, tees and rough will be mowed also today. We are getting some of the detail work done on the course in preparation for the Invitational at the end of this week. We were able to get most of the stump holes filled with soil and will be seeding and sodding these later today. Brandon was able to spray some weeds yesterday as we are seeing the return of some clover and other broadleaves. Troy sprayed greens yesterday with our fertilizer package and fungicide preventative.



We have Junior Golf starting today and will be working around the players this morning. There are still a few wet spots in the rough on #14 that carts should avoid but the rest of the course has dried out pretty well. Please use the 90 degree rule at all times by staying on the path until you are 90 degrees from your ball them you may proceed off the path. We are asking that everyone use the cart path on all Par 3 holes and keep all four tires on the path around  all tees and greens.

On The Course June11th

Invitational Week!!!

We had a pretty good storm blow through the course last night and it dumped a lot of rain. We recieved 1.6" of rain at the shop and 1.75" out on # 4 Tee. Hopefully we get the rain out of the way for the rest of "Invitational Week".

We are going to be working on fixing bunkers this morning and pumping water out of some low spots. We have an outside event on the course today and will be CART PATH ONLY! The range tee is set up on the hitting mats. The rain came in pretty quickly so most of the moisture surface drained off of the greens. We are going to let them drain for a couple more hours this morning and then they will be rolled.

On The Course June 10th

Were in the middle of a hot stretch of weather right now which means hand watering greens.  We will be out checking greens this afternoon to make sure that the greens surfaces don't begin to wilt.  There is a chance of thunderstorms forecasted for this afternoon.  Fernando and Joel are out rolling greens this morning and the rest of the crew are raking bunkers and going threw course set-up procedures.  It should be another great day for golf.

On The Course June 9th

Kent from Kent's Stump Removal was out yesterday afternoon grinding some stumps

We are mowing and rolling greens this morning and Troy is changing pin locations. Should be a very warm day today with a slight chance of thunderstorms popping up later in the day. There is a better chance for severe weather on Sunday. With the predicted heat we have increase our irrigation cycles and will be spot watering areas this morning. We will more than likely have to be out with the hoses this afternoon spot watering some areas.

Kent was out yesterday grinding some of our remaining stumps. We do not own a stump grinder so we have to schedule Kent to come in and do the work for us. With the rain events and how busy Kent has been it has been difficult to get him in to grind the remaining stumps. We had a little window yesterday afternoon and I hope we didn't bother anyone with the noise of the grinder running or the wood chips flying. Kent does a real good job on keeping the wood chips in a neat and orderly pile and we were able to get him on the course and off rather quickly.

On The Course June 8th

Replacing bunker sand on #16 green

 We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. We have very warm weather with us for the next couple of days with high temperatures in the 90's. We will be spot watering areas of the course this morning. Fairways, collars and approaches will be mowed today. Jason and Brandon are getting the range tee set up and then will be setting the course for play. We replaced the bunker sand on the front right bunker of #16 green. The sand had some soil contamination that was preventing the bunker from draining so the crew shoveled all of the old sand out. After the sand was out, Troy checked the drain tile and they put in fresh bunker sand. We have watered the sand in and will be compacting it periodically over the next couple of weeks. The bunker crew also adding some sand to a few other bunkers that were a little thin. 

We had another pin hole leak in some steel pipe on #16 tee. Jason was able find it and repair it with a pressure clamp. We will be back filling the hole today when the soil dries out. Scattered showers rolled through early this morning but missed the course. We are expecting some showers to pop up around the area throughout the day.

Double rainbow west of the course yesterday morning

Thanks to JD and his staff for getting the golfers out on the course and using all of our golf facilities 

On The Course June 7th

We are mowing greens this morning and changing pin locations. Jason is working on some irrigation issues this morning and will be running some irrigation heads. We will be hand watering some areas on the greens this morning and will spot water some areas later this afternoon. Fairways are being mowed today and we will continue the "half and half" or Masters cut through the Invitational. Troy will be adding a little sand to a few of the bunkers later this morning.

The seed on the new forward tee has germinated and will start to fill in quickly. We will be pushing the growth on that tee as much as we can and hope to have the tee open for play mid summer. We have had some comments on a few of the "Combo" or "Member" tees and we are formulating a plan to address a few of the tees this fall. We are going to look at # 3 and #18 by following the Master Plan and adding some new tees.

We have had a really good stretch of weather as of late and we hope it continues. Slight chance of rain over the next couple of days. The radar is showing showers to the west of the course that are heading directly south (not normal). Higher temperatures are predicted for the weekend with a front system moving through on Sunday that should cool everything back down. The beginning of next week is looking very good.

Cristian pruning the Amur Maples near the Driving Range Tee

On The Course June 6th

We have a little grub activity eating some of our turf grass roots on bunker banks

 It was a very pleasant day yesterday with the weather about perfect. Today we are rolling greens and trimming bunker surrounds. Brandon is working on spraying fairways and Troy is attacking some of the grub activity we have seen on some bunker banks. Jason is tying in our fairway fertilizer application by walk spreading the approaches. We will be making a few spot fertilizer treatments to some rough areas later this morning. Fernando and Rubiel have the sod cutter out on #14 fairway patching in an area that typically stays really wet and does not grow well. They will also be adding some bluegrass sod to the cart path edge on #1. We mowed part of the natural area around the old tee complex on #7. We will be spraying a grassy weed herbicide in this area to get rid of some of the canary reed grass and a few other undesirable species.

We are going to be starting our really busy stretch of the season and we will be working on some detail work over the next week leading up to the Invitational. We have a few irrigation issues and drainage issues that we will be tying up this week. Some people have commented on the paint marks on #12 fairway bunker. We have marked out an area to add some pop up irrigation heads to help with the turf on the bunker banks. Our system was designed with large irrigation heads that end up throwing a lot of water into the bunkers. We have a delicate balance with too much moisture in the bunkers and not enough on the bunker surrounds. With the addition of this pop up zone we are going to test the effectiveness of an improved irrigation system to manage our bunker sand and the turf around the area.

Japanese Tree Lilacs are in full bloom

Hole #13

On The Course June 5th

We are adding sand to a few bunkers

 Monday was a very busy day for us as we were able complete a lot of different cultural practices on the golf course. Brandon was able to get all of the Tees sprayed and started to work on bunker banks. The bunker banks are being spray with a stabilized form of urea and this will help with growth. We are starting to see some signs of grub activity on a few of the bunker faces and we will be spraying some insecticide on a few spots tomorrow. Troy sprayed most of the green surrounds to control some Ant problems we are starting to see. Jason was able to get all of the fairways fertilized and ready for the summer. We still have some areas of rough and approaches to fertilize. The fertilizer we use is a slow release product that requires some moisture to work it into the turf canopy. We watered the product in yesterday as we finished each fairway. We ran a pretty heavy cycle of water last night but the humidity and evapotranspiration rate have been high enough to help dry them out again. As we finish fertilizing some more of these areas we will be running more irrigation.

Troy was able to address a few more problem bunkers that are lacking sand depth. We will continue that project today and tomorrow. Today, we are mowing and rolling greens. We set the groomers down on the greens today to help true up the surface. The groomers are a light verticut with vertical knives that help cut any turfgrass plants that are laying down on the canopy. This process does add a little stress to the putting surfaces and we will be watching them closely this afternoon.

Brandon was able to spray all of the tees and start on bunker banks yesterday

Jason fertilized all of the fairways yesterday

Troy spot sprayed for Ants around Green Complexes

On The Course June 2nd

Bill Ruone mowing fairways

We have had a very good stretch of weather over the past couple of days and the course is firming up very nicely. We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. Jason has the crew going very well this morning and we should have another perfect day for golf. With around 200 rounds of golf played on the course yesterday we are starting to see more ball marks left on the greens. If you can't find your ball mark please go ahead and fix any and all that you see. Brandon is changing pin locations and the greens are rolling within our normal speed range.

#14 Forward tee has been seeded and sodded

Carlos and the crew working on sodding the surrounds of #14 forward tee

The forward tee on #14 has been completed and we will be watering it throughout the day. We expect the seed to germinate in 5-7 days and we will be hopeful to have it open later this summer. Please keep all traffic off of the tee until it opens. We have several other areas that are roped off and seeded. We will be periodically watering these areas and adding extra fertilizer. Please use caution when stepping over the ropes and walking around in these areas.