What happened, why is the golf course so wet?

I've worked here at Glendale CC for a long time, and I don't recall conditions being any wetter than they are now. Many areas of the course are almost unplayable, and even the driest parts are sloppy wet. Several people have asked me over the past week why is the course so wet? I asked myself the same question, so I went looking for the past several months rainfall data. The following rainfall data is from the King County Hydrologic Information Center, and the numbers I'm reporting are taken from a collection site at the Bellevue Crossroads area.
Average rainfall for October: 3.41 inches, actual for Oct '12: 7.86 inches.
Average rainfall for November: 5.84 in, actual for Nov '12: 9.56 inches.
Average rainfall for December: 5.43 in, actual for Dec '12 with one four days left in the month: 8.29 inches.
The average rainfall for October  through December is 14.68 inches.
The amount of rainfall we have received from Oct through Dec is 25.71 inches. That's 11.03 inches above normal for the three month period!

I guess all we can do is hope for drier weather to come our way and try to remember what it was like to play the course last summer. Merry Christmas and best wishes for a healthy and happy 2013.

Please level out our gold tees!

Over the past year we have had a lot more golfers "teeing it forward" and playing from the gold tees. If you haven't played from the gold tees, I recommend you get your regular group and have them play from the gold's. I'm a single digit handicap player and I've played from them several times. It's way more fun than you can imagine. I came close to driving several greens, and I hit more 50 yard wedge shots into greens than any round I can remember. I had five birdies the first time out from the gold tees, but I still shot my handicap. Those short wedge shots are not my specialty, and I wound up in a lot more trouble than expected. But I had a lot of fun, and so did the guys I played with.

When the gold tees were built, we never thought they would get the number of rounds per year that they are getting today. If we were to build them today, they would be much larger. One comment that I have received from the gold tee players is that the tees need to be leveled, some have a developed a large crown in the center, or slope one direction.

The photo above is the gold tee on #6, you can see the crown in the middle. We prioritized a list of the gold tees that need work, and put a team together to do the work. The past two weeks the "Gold Team" has leveled out #1, 6, 10, and 15. #17, and 18 are next, with others to follow soon.
Check out the photos below of the work done on #1 gold tee.

 The sod is stripped and the teeing area is adjusted as needed to make it level.

Greg is making some final tuning to get it "just right."

After the leveling is complete, the sod goes back down and the tee surface is blended into the surrounding area. The three photos below are of #10 gold tee which the "Gold Team" is working on today. This is one of the worst, and will require some extra sand to get it level. We'll stay off this tee for a month or two until the sod is stable and can handle foot traffic again. Special thanks to the "Gold Team" (Kyle, Vic, Greg, and Joel) for a job well done!

Bunker washouts

There are several bunkers on the course that "washout" everytime we get a big rainstorm. Surface drainage runs to a lowspot which just happens to be the edge of these bunkers, and the sand moves off the slope to the bottom of the bunker. Ten days ago we got 3 1/2 inches of rain in a week, and the bunkers were in bad shape. We spent an entire day moving the sand back and raking them out, only to see it washed back down the next day. Enough is enough!

 The photos below show the front left bunker on #6. Water would run off the green down to the bunker and over the edge taking the sand with it. We stripped the sod above the bunker, brought in enough fill to raise the area, and replaced the sod.

No more washouts and wasted time fixing this bunker. We'll keep the sodded area roped off for a month or so until the sod is rooted in and stable enough to handle foot traffic.

Pictured below are the "A" Team that did the work on this bunker.

Left to right: Mario with dog Bowden, Nate, Greg, Coach, and Vic. Nice job guys!

 

Do they sell hip waders in the Pro Shop?

The past two days rain events have made our golf course unplayable. There is standing water on every green, and you'll need a pair of hip waders to get over the bridge on #11 to access holes 11 through 15. Most of the bunkers have sand washed off the slopes, but they are draining well as there are no puddles in any of the bunkers. With more rain coming later today, we are out cleaning up the course as best we can before the next downpour.

This is the view from the cart path behind #17 green looking across the creek toward #11 green.

Middle photo of standing water on #17 green.

I'm standing on the bridge across Kelsey Creek on the 11th hole, looking south toward Kelsey Creek Park. The reason we have no south border fence on the 11 tee side of this photo is shown here. When the stream floods, it bring leaves downstream which get trapped against the fence. The force of the water is stronger than the posts holding up the fence can withstand. Goodbye fence!

What are those lines on the greens?

Every two weeks or so we make a spray application to our greens. We use  a Toro Multipro 5800, a 300 gallon sprayer with an 18 foot boom width, and a computer type controller that regulates the nozzle output based on ground speed of the unit. It is a great machine, the best currently available in the industry. When we spray, we don't use a blue dye indicator to show the pattern. It leaves a phony looking blue/green color and the area sprayed is highlighted for several days. The operator driving the spray rig can't see the edge of the last pass made with the sprayer, so an assistant goes along and marks the edge of the last pass.

                                            We use a flagstick and drag it leaving a 18 inch line every 10 feet or so the entire length of the green. It leaves lines for the operator to line up with on the next pass going the other direction.

The lines left behind are shown in the photo below. They are visible for a day or so, but disappear with the next days mowing and don't affect a ball rolled across them.

Strange things can happen in the dark

The month of October can bring us some good golf weather at Glendale. As the days get shorter, it obviously stays dark longer in the morning. The first tee time today is 7am, but sunrise is not until 7:05 am. Our crew started work at 5:30 am, so we were working for at least the first hour in complete darkness. It might as well be 2am, the conditions are exactly the same.  I took the photo below at 6:00am this morning of Genaro mowing #1 green with lights on his mower.

I don't like to mow greens in the dark because it's hard to do a good job. You can't see all of the ball marks and it's real easy to miss a small rock that got shot out of a bunker. If the mower catches a rock just right, it can bend the reel and the bedknife of the mower. That small rock can wind up costing us about $750 in parts and labor to fix the mower. Several other things can happen affecting course setup that don't occur in the light of day. Tee marker alignment can be way off. I'm sure some of our early morning players have come up to the first tee and seen the tee markers lined up way off. Hole placement is even worse. I have chosen some hole locations in the dark that looked fine, but in the light of day they were terrible! You can't see subtle slopes on a green with a flashlight in the dark. We lose an additional 3 1/2 minutes of light everyday this month, and on Halloween sunrise is at 7:53am. So the next time you are out playing early in the morning and you have to play an odd hole location, just remember that strange things can happen in the dark!  

More golfers are using our forward tees

More and more golfers at Glendale CC are using our forward (Gold) tees. When they were built about ten years ago, NOBODY used them. The membership thought it was a total waste of money spent on the project. As time went on, some of the ladies nine hole players tried them and really liked the shorter yardages. Then some senior men and junior players moved up and continued to use them also. This past year the USGA has been pushing their "Tee it forward" campaign. They are trying to get more people to play the golf course from yardages that are more suited for their ability. I'm a single digit player but don't enjoy playing a 7,200 yard course and getting my lunch handed to me. I'd much rather play from 6,700 yards or shorter and have a good time. It's no fun hitting fairway woods and long irons into every par 4 on the course.
 Since our gold tee boxes were never designed for the amount of rounds they are getting, some of them need to be enlarged. The photo below is of the gold tee on #7. Check out the amount of divots on this tee, and it's a par 5 where golfers are teeing off with a driver.

 

More rounds cause more divots to be taken. Since the tees are too small, all of the divots occur in a small area at the center of the tee. As our crew continues to fill in these divots each day, that area gets raised up over time and creates a crown in the center of the tee. Check out the photo below of #6 gold tee and look at the raised area between the markers. Sometime this fall or winter we are going to have to take the sod cutter and cut the sod off the tee, level it out, and put the sod back.  We sure never have a shortage of projects on the golf course!                

When can we hit off the grass?

I get asked all the time why can't we hit off the grass on the driving range tee. The photo below was taken today after using the tee for the weekend. Our driving range is not long enough to hit off the front of the tee, too many balls go over the fence. So, we are restricted to use only the back of the tee. The small area of the tee that is usable can only handle a couple events per year. It will take about a month for this war zone to recover, so it's not fit for play in the mean time.

Where oh where do all our range balls go?

We lose a lot of range balls every year at Glendale. The soil on the driving range is all blue clay, and it gets really soft in wet weather. We did a drainage project on the range about seven years ago and it worked well. But we still lose balls.

During the junior golf camp last week we set up a four hole short course on the driving range. I used a six inch cup for one of the holes to make it easier for the kids. Check out the photo below. I cut a six inch hole ten inches deep. Not a lot of square footage I dug up. I found 17 old range balls in that small hole. Just think how many balls are under the surface just waiting to be found. Too bad there isn't a market for old golf balls, we'd make a small fortune!

Lemon Joy dish soap spells tournament time

Summer showed up one day early this year, arriving on July 4th instead of the usual July 5th. We just had our men's member-guest event at Glendale, which is our largest member tournament of the season. One of the things we do in preparation of the tournament is to spray our fairways, tees, and approaches with Lemon Joy dish soap. I know this sounds crazy, but when mixed with some iron and fertilizer, it makes the sprayed areas shine. We combine 12 ounces of soap, 4 ounces of iron, and .10lb of nitrogen fertilizer in 1.5 gallons of water, and spray that rate per 1000 square feet of turf. In total, we spray 150 gallons of soap.

The spray tank holds 300 gallons,

so we first fill it about 3/4 full of water. Then add the liquid fertilizer and iron, the soap is added last. Since the mixture in the tank is constantly stirred with air agitators, we have to use a product called "No Foam" to prevent the soap from producing lots of foam.

As soon as the tank mixture is sprayed, you can see the shine from the soap. The photo below is taken from #18 fairway looking down to #17 fairway that is one half sprayed. Look how the sprayed area is so much darker in color than the non sprayed fairway. It takes until the next day for the turf to show the color of the added iron and nitrogen fertilizer. After 24 hours, the effect of the three products combined is stunning.

When the sun is shining on the sprayed areas, you have never seen shining power green color like this before. We mow the fairways with a right and left pattern, and when the color of the light and dark mow lines jumps off the suface and hits your eyes, all you can say is WOW! For a big event, you want the golfers to get something extra from their golf experience, and this is it. The color lasts for about five to seven days, but during that time, it doesn't get any better than this.

Divot Police on Patrol

The Glendale divot police are on patrol looking for players who don't replace their divots. Take a look at the photo below and notice that there are three large divots that were filled with sand/seed mix. Also notice that fifteen feet ahead are the three large chunks of sod laying on the fairway. Why didn't the golfers replace their divots? Yes, they filled the holes with seed mix, but that will take at least two weeks to grow back and fill in the hole.

The divots were also overfilled with sand, which kills fairway mower blades and bed knives which are expensive to replace.

The photos below show some of the 136 divots I picked up from the 14th fairway today ( Monday, after a busy weekend). We sent out five guys this morning to pick up divots, and it took them 40 minutes each. That's 3.33 man hours to do the golfers job. These divots have to be picked up by the maintenance crew before we mow the fairways, or the mowers take a beating. It also looks very messy after the fairway mower chops up the divots and spits small pieces all over the fairway.

   I realize that some divots explode into a bunch of small pieces that are not practical to replace. That's the time to fill the hole with sand/seed mix. The photo belows shows a divot I took on 14 fairway. I used a sand wedge and swung as hard as I could. I tore up a sustantial piece of sod.

The next two photos show the divot before and after it was replaced. Look how nice it looks after replacement. You can hardly see a divot was taken.

If you've followed along this far, you can see that replacing the piece of sod is the correct method when filling a divot. I'll make sure that the Pro Shop informs all outside tournament golfers to replace their divots. If we can get the message out to our members to replace divots, we'll be on the way to really improving the condition of our course. If not, watch out for the Divot Police. They'll be on patrol writing citations for failure to replace divots, and all other infractions of golf course etiquitte!

Golfer responsibility checklist

What looks out of place in this photo? If you look closely, you can see that there are 32 broken tees laying on the turf on and around the tee markers. There is a box conveniently located on all of the par 3's to place broken tees, but they are not used much. The maintenance staff here at Glendale spends a lot of time picking up broken tees around the teeing area every day. This should be the golfer's responsibility, just like replacing divots and repairing ball marks. Also shown in the photo are divots taken but not filled. There is a bucket of divot mix on all of the par 3 tees. Our staff also fills many divots on teeing areas everyday which can also be done by the golfer. These house keeping items are done by our staff, but should be done by the golfer. This leads me to think of the other things a golfer should be doing each time they play a round, whether here or any other golf course. We as golfers need to respect the other players on the course, the course itself, and the game of golf too. Listed below is my golfers responsibility checklist. Look it over, and see how many things you are doing each round to help keep Glendale in nice condition.
1. Replace every divot you take. If you can't replace it, fill it in with sand/seed mix.
2. Repair every ball mark you make on a green.
3. Rake your footprints in bunkers, and place the rake along the backside of the bunker.
4. Please don't litter. Place all trash in appropriate containers, and pick up your broken tees.
5. Please keep power carts on the path around tees and greens.
6. Our fairways are much firmer and drier than than the rough areas, so please keep power carts on fairways in wet weather.

By following these six rules, you will help keep our course in good condition, cut down on maintenance by our staff, and make each round of golf more enjoyable for every player at Glendale CC.
Thanks for your help!

Tree or bunker in wrong place?

Trees and bunkers don't get along very well together. Bunkers are hazards on a golf course to penalize a bad shot. A successful shot hit from a bunker is hard enough just hitting off a good lie. Could you hit that same shot from a lie on the sand sitting on top of a one inch wide tree root? I would call that situation double trouble. Chances are that if you hit a drive into one of our fairway bunkers at Glendale, your ball will be resting on top of a tree root just under the surface of the sand. We have six fairway bunkers at Glendale, located on holes 4, 5, and 8. Each one of these bunkers is full of roots just below the surface of the sand, coming from an adjacent tree. These trees are too close to the bunkers. Keeping tree roots out of the bunkers is impossible to maintain. We can pull them out, but we'll miss some and more will be back soon. The real problem is golfer safety. Someone could easily get hurt if their club catches a root while hitting a shot. Check out the photo below of the root in the fairway bunker on the 5th hole. This is typical of the roots found in our bunkers.

The next photo below shows the roots we removed from a small area in the left corner of the left side fairway bunker, on the 4th hole.

A weed is defined as a plant out of place. A tomato plant in a corn field is a weed, and so is a tree in a bunker. In this case the trees are out of place, and in my opinion, the only long term solution is to remove the trees due to the safety issues they create. This issue will be brought up and discussed at the next Green Committee meeting, on July 18, 2012.

Summer mowing plan for greens

As of May 30th, we are now on our summer schedule for mowing greens at Glendale CC. We use Toro Flex 21's with a 14 blade reel, and the cutting height set at .090. These mowers have a floating cutting head, so the actual cutting height with a fixed head type mower would be more like .110. To put it into terms that make more sense, we are cutting the greens 15 thousandths of and inch below 1/8" (.125). The greens are mowed seven days a week into October, and we'll roll them after mowing on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. This should put our green speed into the 10.5 to 11.0 range on the Stimpmeter. If we get them any faster, we lose hole locations because the sloped areas of some greens get way too fast. We don't want to create "Putt-Putt" type of conditions where you have no chance of getting the ball to stop near the hole, close to a sloped hole location.

First Green field trip at Glendale CC for 90 students

 On Monday April 7th, we hosted 90 sixth and seventh grade students from Sacred Heart and St. Louise grade schools. Along with the kids came some parents; their teachers; reps from the USGA, WSGA, and PNGA;  golf course superintendents looking to host an event at their course; and teachers from other schools who are interested in the First Green program. The students spent three hours in the cold, and put up with gusty winds that even made it feel colder. But they hung in there, and had a great time learning at the five stations we had set up for the event. The students spent 30 minutes at each of the five different learning stations.

 Steve Kealy (Glendale CC golf course superintendent) talked about water quality issues and had the kids test their math skills by calculating the velocity and the amount of water flowing in Kelsey Creek. Larry Gilhuly ( USGA Agronomist) talked to the kids about golf and the environment, and then had them participate in a short putting contest. Laurie Deveraux ( City of Bellevue Stream Team Cooridinator) taught the students about the importance of macroinvertebrates (bugs) to fish, in a health stream environment. Moira Campbell ( Instructor from Nature Vision) showed the kids the five different types of salmon in the Northwest, and details of their life cycles. Kyle Young and Josh Cheney (Assistant Superintendents at Glendale CC) showed the kids how water moves through the soil, soil types used on golf courses, did a soil pH test and talked about the significance of the results. The event was also covered by a reporter from KOMO TV, and the story ran on the 4:00, 6:00, and 11:00 news. Here is a link to the TV video:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/School-program-uses-golf-to-teach-students-about-science-149593035.html?tab=video&c=y
After the learning labs were finished, the kids came into the clubhouse to warm up and eat their lunches before heading back to school. It was good learning experience for the kids, as they got to see some of the things in the real world that they had learned in the classroom.

Greens aeration process

We just completed aerating the greens at Glendale CC, and I thought it would be a good time to show how the process works. Core aeration is required on putting greens at least twice per year. It helps to relieve compaction, get some air exchange down into the root zone, and removes some material so that new roots and shoots have space to grow. Shown above is Vic operating one of our Toro greens aerators. We used 1/2" diameter hollow core tines, set at 2" depth, and a 2" X 2" spacing.

Once the aerators are done, it's time to pick up the cores. We use blowers, rakes, and snow shovels to move the cores to the edge of the green, where we can scoop them up and haul 'em away.

Next we apply a heavy layer of sand with a machine called a topdressor. Once the sand is dry we can drag it to fill in the aeration holes.

After running the aerators, applying sand, and dragging, the greens need to be rolled four different directions to help smooth out all of the wheel tracks.

Next we run units on a triplex mower called verticutters. Tracey is shown here on the fifth green. The verticutters cut slices into the green surface about 1/8" deep. It spreads out the sand more evenly, and forces the sand into the aeration holes.

The last step is to drag the sand with a brush unit. Josh is shown here on #6 working the sand into the voids left by the verticutter units. For the next several days we will water the greens to help wash the sand into the holes, and continue rolling to smooth them out. The first several mowings destroy the mower blades, so we're not cutting grass, just picking up sand. After about a week of picking excess sand, we'll put good mowers on the greens and start cutting grass. In about three to four weeks after aerating, the greens will be back to normal and we'll lower the cutting height to our summer setting of .100".

Sodding #10 muck hole repair

After completion of digging out the clay from the wet area next to #10 green, we installed a drain line and filled the area with sand. We purchased 2,000 square feet of sod from Country Green Turf (best sod available) and laid it in place. We'll give it a good shot of fertilizer, and it should be rooted in and ready to play on in two to three weeks.