Yesterday the high temperature in Stockton was 103 degrees which translates to 97 degrees at the golf course, according to our weather station. We always remain a few degrees cooler than the asphalt jungle of the city. Even so, 97 felt pretty hot.

A couple of things you normally do not want to do when it is that hot is aerify and fertilize. We decided to go ahead and do both of those and came out alright. The main reason for not skipping these jobs was the closed Monday we had to work with. We get so much work done having the course to ourselves and it's just too good to pass up.

We sure were anxious to tear things up like this:

Since we've been aerifying the fairways on a regular schedule, each time out is slightly improved from the last. Some holes are still a little rough like number 5 and 16 which have very tight clay soils. Monday afternoon, six of us were out on 16 replacing divots pulled up by the aerifier. It took us about 45 minutes to finish the whole fairway, but it looked great the next day and should heal just fine.