Weather Related Change of Plans

5:45 AM Rain

12 PM attempt to topdress and aerate with solid tines

Sand sticking to everything

4:30 PM More Rain

Short version:

The plan to aerate greens and fairways this week is not going to work out.  Tropical Storm Fred brought rain yesterday and last night and is bringing more tomorrow.  We are going to do a modified (less disruptive) version of greens aeration next Monday and Tuesday.  Fairway aeration, which is handled by a contractor, will be rescheduled for a later date sometime this year.  The course will open up this week and be closed next Monday and Tuesday (Nine holes).  Stay tuned for emails and announcements from the golf shop regarding course availability.  

Long version:

In order to get a quick recovery and have perfect greens as soon as possible, we need to fill all aeration holes with sand.  The humidity and cloud cover alone make it difficult to get the sand dry enough for brushing into the aeration holes.  When it's raining it's impossible.  If we can't get the holes full of sand, then we do not want to make holes.  It's not raining today, but the nearly 2" of rain yesterday/overnight have made it far too soft for us to get heavy equipment on the greens.  Tomorrow there is a nearly 100% chance of more rain which will make Thursday just as wet if not wetter than today.  It takes the better part of two full days to topdress and aerate all 20 greens.  

We planned to pull 1/2" cores, shovel them up, topdress, and brush until the holes are filled.  Since we are pushing things off for a week, we'll be losing some seasonal staff and be doing the task closer to some of the golf events on the calendar.  For those reasons we're going to use a 1/2" solid tine instead. We still fill the holes with sand, but the recovery will be quicker and the demand for manpower will be much less.  This will still give the greens some much needed relief.  We'll try to squeeze in some sort of late season aeration if possible to make up for this change in plans.      

In order to say we tried (I was 99% sure it wouldn't work, but wanted to confirm my suspicion) we did the putting and chipping greens yesterday with the solid tines.  The sand stuck to everything and didn't fall into the holes.  We'll have to try and topdress it again when it dries up.  

Next week looks like much better weather.  We will do all we can to minimize down time to the course, but will need all day Monday and most of the day Tuesday to complete the process.  The golf course may be nine holes for much of Tuesday.