On The Course June 16th

Toni Duerr mowing the approach on #6 at 4am Saturday morning.

 We had a great finish to the weekend with the Invitational on Saturday. Congratulations to Mr. Talberg and Mr. Ogdahl for outlasting the rest of the competitors. It was a great shootout and a great tournament. The Grounds crew really stepped up and put a great effort in preparing for the tournament. It is a challenge to get everything mowed and cleaned up before an 8:00 am shotgun start. The staff mowing fairways were on the course before 3:30am Friday and Saturday morning. The rest of the staff was on the course by 3:45am and we were able to accomplish a lot before the event. We had a little help from a couple of people that volunteered to work the tournament. Larry Gorman who is our Toro representative from MTI mowed greens on Thursday morning and approaches on Friday Morning. Former Assistant Superintendent at Medina Golf and Country Club and now Head Superintendent at Theodore Wirth Golf Course, Troy Tschida, helped with course set up on Friday. It is great to have individuals take time out of their busy schedule to help get the course ready for the Invitational Tournament.

Corey Heasley and Troy Tschida changing the hole location on Invitational Friday

 We have received almost 2 inches of rain in the past 24 hours which has saturated the course. We will be cart path only for the outside event and member play will start at 3pm. We are mowing greens today and will be trying to get the rest of the course mowed before more predicted rain this evening. The forecast is calling for spotty showers on and off all week. Hopefully most of it will miss the golf course. 

Al White drains an 8 foot putt to go to an extra hole in the Invitational Shootout

Jason White and Al White finished in Second Place during the Invitaitonal

Invitational Champions Mark Talberg and Steve Ogdahl

On The Course June 12th

Larry Gorman from MTI giving us a hand with mowing greens this morning

 We are mowing and rolling greens this morning. We received 0.35" of rain last night and that has softened the course up a little. We will allow carts off of the path today but we recommend using caution as there are a couple of puddles in the rough areas. There is Ladies League this morning followed by a 1:30pm Shotgun for the Invitational Practice Round. The crew will be coming back this evening to mow the course and get ready for the opening round of the Invitational.

The willow stumps have been ground out of the area by #9 pond and the crew will be working on finish grading and seeding later today. We have scheduled the stumps to be ground out the past couple of weeks only to have it rain each time. Kent will be back out on Monday to finish grinding the rest of the stumps on the golf course.

We have had a lot of our normal routine agronomic practices be altered by the rain this season. When the weather is nice the crew has been working hard to get as much done as possible. We have been unable to consistently mow and roll greens on our normal schedule. If you have any questions regarding course conditions please email me directly.

Kurt Wacker mowing #7 green this morning

Bill, Ron and Tony mowing #9 fairway

On The Course June 6th

It will be a perfect day for golf today with clear skies and warm temperatures. Greens were sprayed yesterday with fertilizer and a wetting agent. The wetting agent helps pull moisture off of the putting surface and into the soil profile. The product we use needs to be watered in and we ran a night cycle last night to move the wetting agent into the soil profile. It was the first night irrigation cycle we have ran on greens all years. The good news is the greens feel firm and will be great for the weekend. The bad news is we had one irrigation head stick on #1 green. It ran for a couple of hours last night and left some standing water on the green. It is however draining very well with the wetting agent that was applied. We will be mowing it later this morning after the green has dried out.

Greens on the Executive course were aerified and topdressed yesterday. We will be running some irrigation on those later this morning. We are mowing and rolling greens this morning with the exception of #1. Fairways and rough are also being mowed. The crew will be working on some detail trimming to day to get ready for the weekend.

On The Course June 5th

Vertical Mowing/ Scarifying the Tee Surfaces

 We were finally able to take advantage of some good weather and get some agronomic work done. With all of the rain we have been getting a lot of the things we need to do to get good healthy turf has been delayed. Our priority over the past couple of weeks has been to try to keep up with the mowing and the detail trimming on a daily basis. Yesterday, we were able to vertical mow the tees and topdress them with a little sand. This will help true up and firm up the tee surfaces. We are removing thatch by doing this and adding sand back in its place. The healing time should be pretty quick with the Invitational already coming up next week.

Today we are rolling greens and spraying them with fertilizer and plant protectants. We were unable to spray on Monday with the rain over the weekend. The crew is working on mowing bunker banks and Sheldon is trying to keep up with the growth of the rough. We will be letting carts off the path today on most holes but might keep a few cart path only due to some wet conditions. Please use the cart path as much as possible to minimize the wear and damage in the wet areas of the golf course. Corey was able to get the front 9 bunker banks sprayed yesterday with some fertilizer and wetting agent. We still have a few thin areas on a few bunker banks and we want to get them to fill in.




Blowing Debris from the Tees

Corey Heasley adding a light coating of sand to fill in the grooves

Kurt Wacker dragging the sand into the turf canopy.

On The Course June 2nd

You can see the high water mark where the debris is sitting.

 It was quite the rain event Saturday afternoon into Sunday. On our weather station we had 0.91 inches of rain in one hour Saturday afternoon. In another event we received 0.76 inches in one hour. Our total for this rain event was 3.76 inches at the Weather Station on #3 and 3.87 inches at the rain gauge at the Maintenance Facility. The course has been draining well the past 24 hours and we expect to be out on the course this morning fixing bunkers and running some drainage pumps. The crew is going to work on sanding and seeding the Driving Range tee. If the greens are firm enough to mow later this morning we will try to get this done before the Shotgun Tournament this afternoon.

Water sitting on #14 Fairway Sunday Morning

 The mosquitos are out in full force and we would like to remind everyone that Bug Spray damages turf. Please use the cart paths or hard surfaces when applying bug spray. We are looking into fogging the tree lined areas on the back nine later this week to help mitigate some of the mosquitos. With all of the warm weather and large amounts of rain I would expect to see an above average mosquito hatch this year.

Water sitting between 5 and 6 fairways

Water sitting between 6 and 7 fairways