Saturday, October 6, 2012

Jig Saw Puzzles


The night before a recent ladies golfing event, which had the ladies playing with members of staff here at Stockton Golf & CC, we had vandals spray paint three of our greens and also the restroom out on #16.

With some offensive language sprayed on the greens, and the ladies only a couple of hours away from a shot gun tee time, we scrambled a couple of groups from our crew to work on the problem greens.

Not knowing how much , if any, grass would be lost to the graffiti we decided to take cup cutters and half moon the letters. What is half mooning you ask. Half mooning is when we sink our cup cutter to the normal depth on the green as if we were about to change a hole location, then instead of removing the cup cutter plug we actually turn the cup cutter 180 degrees and scramble the painted letters.

Here is a couple of examples below.



The orange spray paint is still visible for now but the words are illegible. As the grass grows, we will cut of the painted sections.


Some areas of thick paint will not survive and we will need to plug out the areas and also sand and seed these areas.
Areas of thick paint were plugged out and transplanted to the edges of the greens.  Unfortunately we do not currently have a nursery green to deal with this type of issue. I am working on the cost to build a bent grass nursery.
These areas though unsightly, will play the same as the rest of the green. We will need to revisit these areas over time to work on the health and appearance of the turf. In the end we are thankful that it was only paint.

See you on the course.

Bring on Some Speed - - - - - - - -> O __


The greens have recovered fully in a very timely manner with no major problems.


                                                                                                                                                       
Here is a picture of #12 green seven days after aeration.

We are removing a lot of grass and the bumpiness is also less noticeable due to the holes closing over









#7 green. Approaches and fairways also being cut  seven days after greens aeration.




 



With a couple of light topdressings and some grooming, the greens after ten days are ready for a growth regulator. We will ramp up the rolling to continue to firm the greens. Also the application times for irrigation will be cut back further.

Over all the greens are coming along nicely.





 As always we appreciate those members who take the time and effort to properly fix ball marks on the greens.

A ball mark that is not fixed immediately will leave a scar on the green that will take weeks to recover.





#4 Green after two weeks

#16 green. Two weeks after aeration.


 
Greens speeds will steadily increase over the next couple of weeks, returning to the same conditions we had before started aeration.

See you out on the course.

Followers