Very Dry!

The crew was hard at work today getting the course mowed and ready for the Easter weekend, but Assistant Superintendent Ben Christie and I spent most of the day chasing wilt.  Yes, we are hand watering dry spots in April!  Already I have run several full irrigation cycles on the golf course and I will be turning it up tonight in preparation for Monday's greens aerification.  Never before have I seen the golf course this dry so early in the year!  With the 10 day forcast showing little signs of any precipitation, we will continue to pump water to keep up with dry turf.  Keep your fingers crossed for rain in the next week or so... 

Below are some interesting pictures that sort of sum up the spring we are having.

A world map of temperature departures from normal.  According
to this map, we are the "hottest place on earth" when compared to
average temperatures for this time of year.

Already the State Climatologist is posting U.S. Drought Monitor
figures.  Champaign is on the edge of an "abnormally dry" area.
With no rain in the forcast, we will likely move into a "moderate
drought" in the next week or so.

Assistant Superintendent Ben Christie monitors and waters dry
spots on #16 green.  We are already having to spend afternoons
watching our turf for signs of wilt.

Goose Patrol

I couldn't resist posting this...

Lucy, my 2 year old Brittany, has been honing her skills as the resident "goose chaser." With her speed, tenacity, and increasing fearlessness she has been harassing the geese at every opportunity.  I took this video the other day when we came upon our nesting pair off the nest and in the #13 pond.

Apologies for the sloppy camera work, but you'll still probably appreciate the hard work that Lucy gives!  It's hard to believe that not quite 12 months ago she was recovering from achilles re-attachment surgery!

Enjoy...

A Spring of Plenty!

 During this unusually warm spring, the golf course seems to be moving in double time towards summer conditions.  We have already made our spring crabgrass preventative application, an application we normally wouldn't be making for another couple of weeks! Because of a potentially longer season, we will be following up our crabgrass application with a second application later this spring.  This "split application" will allow the herbicide to outlast the window of crabgrass germination.  Next on tap is a much earlier than normal grub control application. 

This warm spring has also brought with it plenty of "plenty's"!  Our flowering trees have come into full bloom and "plentiful" hardly describes them right now.  It has been rare to see our trees in such a showy bloom!  Our other deciduous trees have also decided to leaf out early.  Many of our maples seem to have almost come into their summer leaf out.  Last week I was noticing how many leaves were already on our silver maples, but when I looked closer I found that there were very few leaves, but "plenty" of seeds!  Not a good sign for the weeks to come!  We will have our blowers working overtime to keep up with what will surely be a bumper crop of maple seeds this year.

Last, but certainly not least, are the Poa annua seedheads.  This spring we elected to not make our spring growth regulator application to control seedheads, partly because the timing of the application came and went so fast, but also because of the fact that the seedheads came on so early that they will be finishing up before many golfers begin to play with regularity.  Allowing Poa to produce a seedhead helps in our longterm battle against Poa in that the plant expends a considerable amount of its stored energy producing that seedhead.  A weaker plant gives bentgrass a bit of a competitive advantage later in the growing season.  The amount of seed produced by the Poa does present a problem if it were to germinate, but it is merely a drop in the bucket when you consider the amount of Poa seed already in our soil.  My hope is to prevent the Poa seed from germinating through the use of pre-emergant herbicides, and continue to give bentrass the competitive edge through our cultural programs and our Velocity program.

Flowering crabs and a redbud near #17 green are in full display.

At first glance, our silver maples seem to be leafing out early.



Upon closer inspection, it is obvious these aren't leaves!!



The emergence of Poa seedheads is earlier and heavier than usual.



Mowing Right Along...

Not many of us in the golf course industry have seen a spring quite like this one.  With a week of 70's behind us and the 7 day forcast showing highs in the 70's and even a couple 80's there is no doubt we will be seeing our golf course come into its own much earlier this year than any that I can remember.  Tomorrow will mark our third mowing of the greens this year, and next week we will likely begin mowing every other day.  My gut tells me that we will still have a significant cool down yet this spring, and dare I say some "wintery precipitation" could still fall, but we will certainly enjoy this preview of what I hope to be a great year.

Alan puts the first cut of the year on #17 fairway.

Assistant Superintendent Ben Christie works on

smoothing the root pruning trenches.  These will

get seeded in April.

A downside of the early spring is that we have spent

so much time mowing grass that our winter crew hasn't

been able to finish our winter cleanup yet.

Another victim of an early spring is an unprepared bunker.

We will be bringing back some seasonal help next week to

start getting bunkers ready for the year.  Golfers will have to

show patience while we finish our prep work.

First cut of 2012!

March 7th could be one of the earliest "first cuts" in the eight seasons I've been at CCC.  The non-winter we had and the recent warm temperatures have caused some growth and greening up on the golf course.  We mowed greens only today and will likely get collars and approaches mowed yet this week.  I am not in a huge hurry to mow tees and fairways partly because we have about a week's worth of cleanup to do after two days of nearly constant 35mph wind!  Any weakly attached branch managed to find its way to the ground, including half of a tree next to the practice range and a crab apple near the 18th green. We will likely be spending some time during the next week cleaning the branches up and slowly get around to mowing tees and fairways as areas become clean enough to mow.  In the next few weeks we will start bringing back part of our seasonal crew to help prepare the rest of the course for the season.

Sectional Management

A couple difficult growing seasons in a row are great for exposing the weaknesses in your management programs on the golf course.  Whether it is a re-evaluation of agronomic programs, confirmation that you are doing things right, or exposing the need to completely re-think your approach, many times there are changes that are needed.

This winter we are doing just that, tweaking some agronomic programs, tree root pruning in areas that turf suffers from tree root competition, and changing our philosophy in how we attack the management of our golf course.

For years,  our crew has been spread throughout the golf course.  Often times our crew has been assigned jobs that "start on #1 and finish on #18" encompassing one small element of the entire golf course.  This approach works, and is widely used, but has it's weaknesses.  Pride in work and ownership have been two areas that I have seen slip recently and I think it has its root in the fact that most of my staff does everything everywhere!  In many cases I have five or six people doing the same repeated task throughout the week and when something goes wrong, it becomes the norm to just blame one of the other guys!  Frustrating for sure, and with the recent difficult growing seasons it has come to a head.

To address this problem we are going to tackle the golf course a little differently this year.  We are going to a "Sectional Management" philosophy that will hopefully inspire our staff to take ownership in their work and at the very least create some accountability that will help in the efficiency of our management of the staff.  Here's how it will work...

We have broken the golf course up into four sections, and have included the clubhouse grounds and practice range as the fifth.  Each section will be the responsibility of two staff members (one for the clubhouse section).  This "sectional team" will have the responsibility of everything in their section, with the exception of large area mowing (fairways and rough), and chemical applications.  All of the green and tee mowing will be their responsibility.  They will tend to their bunkers and fix edges that need to be repaired.  They will be responsible for all of the "detail work" in their section.  Expectations will be thoroughly spelled out and will be constantly checked for quality.  The trade off for the employee is that, provided they are keeping up with their expected duties, they will have a great deal of freedom in how they go about meeting those expectations.  Autonomy and a sense of accomplishment will be their reward for doing their job well.  As a manager, the sectional approach will drastically improve my ability to efficiently manage our staff.  I will always have a "go to guy" for things I see on the golf course.

Training will be critical, along with establishing and enforcing our expectations.  If Ben and I do our jobs, the net result will be a more engaged, more efficient staff who provide consistantly better conditions on the golf course!

Because of this new philosophy and other off season changes, I am more excited about the upcoming year than I have been in a long while!!

Welcome Ben Christie!

Ben Christie started this week as our new Assistant Superintendent.  Ben grew up just blocks from the Club and attended Champaign Central High School.  He spent several years working his way up through the ranks at the University of Illinois Orange and Blue Courses where he eventually landed the position of Second Assistant Superintendent.  Working for former CCC Assistant Superintendent Allen Wall, Ben was able to gain valuable working knowledge of the art of golf course management and was frequently given the reigns to run the crew.  With Ben's local ties to the Club and his willingness to learn, I am confident that he will be a great addition to the management team at CCC.   I look forward to this season and beyond working with Ben! 

During his first week at the Club we have put Ben to work!  We removed several White Pines from the back and right side of #15 tee, opening it up to some air movement and some morning sun.  We have a few more trees to prune in this area and the memorial garden behind the tee will be reduced in size.  These changes will have a drastic impact on our ability to grow bentgrass on this tee!  Standing on the tee, you will feel a little less crowded by the pines to the right.

Also this week, we begun work on our Section Bays in the Quonset building.  These bays will house all of the tools needed to maintain each of the four "sections" on our golf course.  Next week I will write about our new "Sectional" approach to managing our golf course.  I believe this new approach will translate to consistantly better conditions on the course and clubhouse grounds.  Stay tuned for more information!!