Wow, what a week this has been. I can not remember a week that we have experienced weather like the past 6 days. Temperatures at night have been cool enough to almost warrant starting a fire in the fireplace, yet the afternoons are nice enough to play 18 holes in shorts. The weather has put a little confusion into the minds of the turfgrass, but in no way has it been detrimental to course conditions. The shorter days and lower sun angle have made their mark on a few areas of the golf course, mainly 5 fairway which is situated in a location that it sees hardly any sunlight during the winter months. For this reason, we will be implementing our winter path only rules here to reduce thinning out of the turfgrass. We witnessed great results last year by rotating weeks of keeping carts on the path and allowing cart traffic onto the fairway so we will put it back into place this year.
Looking forward, the club will be hosting the annual PGA Tour Qualifying School again this year beginning on November 16th and running through the 21st. There are minor preparations out of the ordinary that will be taking place for this week long event, however no changes to our normal maintenance practices will be made. This means we will not be double mowing and rolling the greens and fairways. We are scheduled to begin actually RAISING mowing heights dependant upon weather conditions. However, this past week has been conducive to decent turf growth, so we have stayed with our late-summer/early-fall heights which are lower than our winter mowing heights.
The "damage" done to the golf course due to divots during the Qualifying School has been a major concern to many over the past couple of years. This is a time of year when the turf's ability to heal itself is greatly decreased, but not completely stopped. We witnessed this last year by some warm periods during the month of December that actually helped the fairways heal quicker than in other years. If you think about it, the amount of play that we receive during Q-School is very similar to a normal week at Deerwood. The major difference in this week is that the divots are concentrated in certain areas, instead of spread out like a shotgun blast. Our plan, weather dependent, is to go out every afternoon after play and refill all divots, so if we do have some weather conducive for healing, the grass will have a solid medium to grow over and the divots will be level with the surrounding fairway.
With that being said, I am packing up and heading north to Fort Worth to watch NASCAR at Texas Motor Speedway this weekend; while I should be heading to the Hill Country and some deer hunting I promised the wife that I would take her to a NASCAR race. Enjoy the great weather we are experiencing for I am sure it will be changing soon. Have a great weekend and as always, feel free to pass along any suggestions, ideas, or questions concerning, well, just about anything. If I don't have an answer or opinion, I am sure I can find one or make one up.
BTHOCU!!
