I am sending the golf update one day early due to a large tournament in the morning. I will be busy trying to get everything organized prior to the 9:15 AM shotgun start. 156 golfers will be teeing it up tomorrow morning to have a great social gathering with some serious bragging rights on the line (the only people who actually care about the bragging is the winners).
The weather has turned for the better as we enter the month of June. All of the rain and changing temperatures has negatively affected our budget and course condition. Some days the rainfall puts us on the borderline of whether or not the course should be open for golf. This is a very serious situation that I think about a great deal. The majority of the time the course is saturated but still playable with minimal damage done by carts.
Also, the revenue part of the equation weighs very heavy in this decision making process. I don’t ever want to have the golf course open if there is a risk of damage done by carts. Some days it might not seem like the course should be open for play, but the total damage done to date is very minimal from these days.
Herbicide application has been my top focus of this past week. I promise you I hate the dandelions a heckuva lot more than you do. It has been very difficult trying to find weather conditions to spray these pests which makes me dislike them even more. The entire town is covered in these weeds and it makes for some very ugly topography. Well, I have been working diligently to remove them from the golf course.
I started spraying on Thursday morning and made it to mid afternoon. Early Friday morning I was back in the seat of the sprayer adding hours onto the hour meter. By Friday nightfall I completed 17 applications of herbicide to the course. This amounted to 136 acres of turf sprayed. I sprayed tees, fairways, and rough (everything but the greens).
Saturday morning I completed holes #5, #12, and #13 with two tank loads of herbicide. The remaining areas are the rough between #5 and #6, #13 tees and surrounds, #14 south rough and fairway, and all of #15. I will be spraying more this evening once the traffic dies down. I hope to complete the majority of the remaining areas.
There are only a few holes left to treat before I start hand spraying around trees, bushes, etc. I will return in the fall to make another broadleaf weed control application. There should be very few weeds left on the course after a week or so.
Our maintenance schedules have been very difficult with the heavy rainfall and standing water. We hit it very hard the last couple of days this week to get things as caught up as possible. This creates a lot of work hours and not enough hours in the day. I am happy with the condition of the course as we prepare for one of our largest tournaments this morning.
Our parking lot is finally starting to come around. We have been dragging it multiple times every week trying to speed up the healing process. The base is finally starting to firm up. We had a difficult time moving much material around on Friday. I take that in a positive light and hope the wet spots are history.
Our air conditioning units were not working at the end of the week. Hanson’s Plumbing and Heating is on site this morning correcting the issues. We will have air in the clubhouse by late morning.
Enjoy your weekend and soak up some sunshine. We never know when it will turn into rain. I also hope our farming community has great weather to get their crops planted removing this burden from their shoulders.
Spencer Municipal Golf Course 