Early August Update

Our battle against nematodes and related disease issues on greens is going well.  It seems as if we have gotten over the worst of it and are looking much better.  The health of a few greens could have been categorized as "critical" and I had concerns that recovery may not happen until the fall weather arrived.  We have one more treatment to make for nematodes and will have to monitor greens very closely for the next month.  Aeration is quickly approaching and it will give us a much needed boost.  

Cicada killer wasps are more numerous than ever before.  Multiple greens are affected and some, like 13, are full of them.  We've been treating their holes with insecticide and swatting them out of the air with badminton racquets, but they continue to wreak havoc.  Last week we took about 20 plugs off the edge of 13 green and tried to repair the damage they'd done.  The next day there were probably 15 new burrows.  We have never had this many and they have never hung around for this long so it's been frustrating. 


                                           

  

We swapped plugs from the edge of 13 green to all the cicada killer holes. 

We have had our hands full with irrigation issues since Jimmy retired in early May.  Recently we suffered a broken pump mount out in the lake.  This put one of our two pumps out of commission for two weeks during the sweltering heat.  With a hot and dry July, it was a bad time to be at half speed with our ability to move water.  In addition to the pump issues, we've had a flurry of routine headaches like broken heads, faulty wiring, and satellite issues.  Satellites are the boxes you see on every hole.  There is a lot going on inside those things and they are showing their age. 

Irrigation head on 7, among many others, needed some TLC

Bean supervised

Alex tried to stretch a 100' hose too far.  This was in front of 18 green
about 45 minutes before the shotgun start last Saturday.