The San Luis Obispo County Amateur Championship contestants were up against Mother Nature this past weekend. The wind was whipping hard both days, but none the less some great scores were posted and a familiar name was atop the leader board after all of the scores were posted. Congratulations to Brian Wiggins as he posted a score of 145 to claim the title!
Results:
Championship Flight
Brian Wiggins 145
Levi Garcia 146
Jeremy Moreno 149
First Flight (Net)
Bob DeSoto 140
Doug Kerr 142
Second Flight (Net)
George Dodge 148
John LeJeal 148
George was declared the winner after a one hole playoff.
Thanks to all of the contestants for your participation!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
San Luis Obispo Men's City Amateur
Aerification is complete and we are ready for all contenders! The San Luis Obispo County Amateur is this weekend so get your registration forms filled out. The first round of the tournament will be held at Dairy Creek Golf Course in San Luis Obispo and Sunday's final or second round will be held at Chalk Mountain Golf Course in Atascadero. The courses are in great condition and we are expecting some fantastic weather so click on the link below or call Chalk Mountain (805) 466-8848 or Dairy Creek (805) 782-8060 to reserve your spot to try to become the next San Luis Obispo County Amateur Champion!
http://www.dairycreek.com/SLO%20County%20Mens%20Amateur.htm
http://www.dairycreek.com/SLO%20County%20Mens%20Amateur.htm
Friday, April 23, 2010
BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!
I know that this is no news to any of you in the industry, but what a spring! Spring is typically a busy time of year with all of the pre summer prep with pre-emergent herbicide applications, spring fertlization, aerification, irrigation mobilization and servicing, verticutting, rain delays, preventitive fungicide applications. This list could go on and on, but I degress. Let me shed some light on these topics reltaing to what we have been up to since I have not posted here for nearly 6 weeks.
As I said staff has been busy. At Dairy Creek, we are finally emptying out our storage areas that were full of pre-ordered fertilizers to help produce quality surfaces for the entire course. We applied a product called Polyon that will help feed our fairways, approaches, and immediate roughs with roughly a 1/10th of a pound of nitrogen through September. I have had great results with this product in other areas of the country and we are trying it here as well. This should help us reach our goal of consistency and save money at the same time since we will not have a need to fertilize again until our late fall fertilization. We will be making an application every 6 weeks or so on our tees boxes and green surround roughs. The GREAT thing about all of these fertlizers is that they are slow release fertilizers similar to the newer varieties that your local home and garden stores are beginning to carry. In the golf course industry we have been using these types of fertilizers for years because we want to save money (labor and material) and also because we want to be good stewards of the environment. If we apply products that do not last long and are not completely used up at the end and leave a long term residual we are wasting money and hurting the environment we intend to protect! It is my intent and that of my staffs to protect our water ways, water sources, and the fantastic wildlife that helps make our courses so inviting. I think you would find those sentiments coming from nearly every golf superintendent in the world! Aerification will take place the 4th of May.
Morro Bay just finished an aerification and we are nearly healed. We are in the process of repairing our aerifier so that we can fininsh aerifying the collars and move onto Dairy Creek at the beginning of May as stated above. We verticutt our fairways this spring instead of performing this task in June/July. Our intent was to get ahead of the Kikuyu grass and not to be in the way of the tourists and regular golfers during the peak of the season. We will be using a plant growth regulator this year to help control the thatchiness of this turf species as well in our effort to maintain efficiency. This thatch reduction will hopefully have the ancillary effect of reducing water inputs due to having to water enough to get through the thatch and into the soil where it will have a better result, not to mention that it will eliminate all of those whispy white seed heads that show up late in the day after mowing. We have expanded some of our habitat corridors to increase our wildlife populations. I understand that this may result in a few lost balls! For this I apologize, but we will continue to monitor these areas and make adjustments accordingly with the game of golf and you the golfer in mind. Again we want to exist in harmony with the environment and its inhabitants reaching the goals and missions of the Audubon program in which we are certified.
Chalk Mountain is in great shape as it usually is during the spring, fall, and winter. Not to say that the course is rough during the summer, but with the soils and water we are encountering on that course the summer presents more struggles. So from a turf managers standpoint we don't look bad, but staffs have to work much harder. Chalk is in the process of verticutting greens to remove excess leaf material and thatch in preparation for aerification. The irrigation upgrade has been helping to decrease water usage by improving coverage and efficiency and the course conditions are showing the results of these improvements. Since the renovation, irrigation programs have been tweaked and we will continue to tweak these systems in our attempt to provide consistency to all playing surfaces.
The rains this year have really hampered the amount of play that we have experienced at the three golf courses; however the water has flushed the soils and provided great playing conditions, so grab your bag and head to the course!
As I said staff has been busy. At Dairy Creek, we are finally emptying out our storage areas that were full of pre-ordered fertilizers to help produce quality surfaces for the entire course. We applied a product called Polyon that will help feed our fairways, approaches, and immediate roughs with roughly a 1/10th of a pound of nitrogen through September. I have had great results with this product in other areas of the country and we are trying it here as well. This should help us reach our goal of consistency and save money at the same time since we will not have a need to fertilize again until our late fall fertilization. We will be making an application every 6 weeks or so on our tees boxes and green surround roughs. The GREAT thing about all of these fertlizers is that they are slow release fertilizers similar to the newer varieties that your local home and garden stores are beginning to carry. In the golf course industry we have been using these types of fertilizers for years because we want to save money (labor and material) and also because we want to be good stewards of the environment. If we apply products that do not last long and are not completely used up at the end and leave a long term residual we are wasting money and hurting the environment we intend to protect! It is my intent and that of my staffs to protect our water ways, water sources, and the fantastic wildlife that helps make our courses so inviting. I think you would find those sentiments coming from nearly every golf superintendent in the world! Aerification will take place the 4th of May.
Morro Bay just finished an aerification and we are nearly healed. We are in the process of repairing our aerifier so that we can fininsh aerifying the collars and move onto Dairy Creek at the beginning of May as stated above. We verticutt our fairways this spring instead of performing this task in June/July. Our intent was to get ahead of the Kikuyu grass and not to be in the way of the tourists and regular golfers during the peak of the season. We will be using a plant growth regulator this year to help control the thatchiness of this turf species as well in our effort to maintain efficiency. This thatch reduction will hopefully have the ancillary effect of reducing water inputs due to having to water enough to get through the thatch and into the soil where it will have a better result, not to mention that it will eliminate all of those whispy white seed heads that show up late in the day after mowing. We have expanded some of our habitat corridors to increase our wildlife populations. I understand that this may result in a few lost balls! For this I apologize, but we will continue to monitor these areas and make adjustments accordingly with the game of golf and you the golfer in mind. Again we want to exist in harmony with the environment and its inhabitants reaching the goals and missions of the Audubon program in which we are certified.
Chalk Mountain is in great shape as it usually is during the spring, fall, and winter. Not to say that the course is rough during the summer, but with the soils and water we are encountering on that course the summer presents more struggles. So from a turf managers standpoint we don't look bad, but staffs have to work much harder. Chalk is in the process of verticutting greens to remove excess leaf material and thatch in preparation for aerification. The irrigation upgrade has been helping to decrease water usage by improving coverage and efficiency and the course conditions are showing the results of these improvements. Since the renovation, irrigation programs have been tweaked and we will continue to tweak these systems in our attempt to provide consistency to all playing surfaces.
The rains this year have really hampered the amount of play that we have experienced at the three golf courses; however the water has flushed the soils and provided great playing conditions, so grab your bag and head to the course!
"When you get those dudes thinking, they're in trouble"
~Pete Dye, the course architect, on desiging PGA venues
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Customer appreciation day
The event this past Saturday was a complete blast and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting all of the golfers on the 13th tee and on the putting green for the mini golf challenge. Congratulations to Mark Anderson and his closest to the pin accomplishment of 13' 11.75". Mark will be receiving a pass for a month of free golf. I will post more results later next week as well as photos. Here are pictures of the mini course I set up on Friday for the event as well as some other recent photos. Enjoy the fantastic weather we have in our future and I will see you on the golf courses!
Creating the routing. No Nicklaus or Pascuzzo and Pate, but not bad if I say so myself!
Adding the hazards and obstacles!
The masterpiece is complete and ready for Saturday.
The view from the 4th tee box, dogleg right par 3 with a risk/reward opportunity to cut the corner if you dared!
The finishing hole had about 12 feet of break and could barely be stopped in play with a perfect shot, just ask Kent Lauble :) We later decided to add a lateral hazard behind the hole to speed up play for Saturday.
Local residents playing through.
What an absolutely gorgeous morning! This is the view from behind the 17th green at Dairy Creek.
Just after sunrise and ahead of the mowers behind the 13th green at Dairy Creek. Richard, this would be a great picture for your "what hole is this" on your facebook site.
Struttin' their stuff! You can hear these guys all over the course at Dairy Creek and a few at Morro Bay too. Who says golf courses are BAD for the environment?!
Creating the routing. No Nicklaus or Pascuzzo and Pate, but not bad if I say so myself!
Adding the hazards and obstacles!
The masterpiece is complete and ready for Saturday.
The view from the 4th tee box, dogleg right par 3 with a risk/reward opportunity to cut the corner if you dared!
The finishing hole had about 12 feet of break and could barely be stopped in play with a perfect shot, just ask Kent Lauble :) We later decided to add a lateral hazard behind the hole to speed up play for Saturday.
Local residents playing through.
What an absolutely gorgeous morning! This is the view from behind the 17th green at Dairy Creek.
Just after sunrise and ahead of the mowers behind the 13th green at Dairy Creek. Richard, this would be a great picture for your "what hole is this" on your facebook site.
Struttin' their stuff! You can hear these guys all over the course at Dairy Creek and a few at Morro Bay too. Who says golf courses are BAD for the environment?!Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Golf Course Etiquette
I played golf yesterday at Morro Bay, as I occasionally do, to see how the courses are playing and to get feedback from our customers. I was happy with the conditions of the course as far as quality of cut and general aesthetics, although some people mentioned that some of the rough was a bit tall. I agree, but the mower can only cover so much ground in a day and we have had quite a bit of rain recently, so bear with us as we play catch up. The greens were exceptionally good in my opinion and the crews' hard work is paying off. We are using some new methods to control the Poa annua and it's seedheads including rolling 3x per week and topdressing occassionally. The greens have responded very well creating a smooth surface, a few bumps here and there (read on I will address this issue below), firming up quite a bit, and rolling about a 9.25-9.5 on the stimp meter. Yes that is right near 9.5! Now that is not too fast by the standards of the best golfers on flat greens, but on Morro Bay's greens it is nearly too fast. With all of the slope on the greens and the influence of Black Hill and the Pacific Ocean I guarantee it is nearly all that you want to handle and the greens will test the best of putting strokes. The players in my group were putting balls off of the greens and we had the occassional 5 putt. From my perspective that is dangerous as we loose pin positions and potentially increase golfers frustration.
Addressing the bumpiness of the greens...there are so many ball marks that are not being repaired and those that are repaired have not been fixed properly to the point that the repaired marks are dying or being scalped by mowers. It is part of a golfers responsibility to fix your ball mark and I like the adage of fixing at least one more. Yesterday I was fixing probably 20 marks per green and probably could have fixed 20 more, but we had to move to the next tee box. To speed the repair of the damage it is important to properly fix the ball mark. Many times people will use their divot tool and pry the soil up to fill in the depressed area. This does more damage than not fixing the mark at all. The reason is as you pry the turf up the lifting tears the leaves from the roots effectively killing the plant and ultimately leaving a dead brown spot on the green in a week or two. That brown spot will then take at least 2 weeks to heal and fill in on our Poa greens at Morro Bay and maybe longer on a bentgrass green. To properly fix the ball mark you should insert your repair tool into the turf at an angle toward the center of the ball mark. Instead of lifting the turf you should do the opposite and push the outsides of the mark to the center of the mark. Continue this process all of the way around the ball mark until the cinter of the mark has been filled in with good healthy turf. This procedure will allow the ball mark to heal within hours and maintain the true ball roll that we all desire. It is every golfers' responsibility to leave the golf course in better condition than you find it and it truly helps many of those putts around the hole find the bottom of the cup!
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