http://gcm.typepad.com/gcm/2010/08/local-media-spotlight-hits-whistling-straits-crew.html
Here is a link a little clip of the maintenance preparation at the PGA. It takes an army and things sure have changed since I was part of the 1993 PGA at Inverness Club. they have 135 staff working on the course each day, at Inverness Club we had our normal staff of 25 plus just a handful of extra help.
Once again we had another record and back breaking storm this time we had 3.25 inches and once again all the bunkers washed out, not as much damage as the last storm. We have been working on pumping and pushing sand on the greens bunkers. All the greens bunkers will be completed today. We just do not have enough time to finish the fairway bunkers today and with the amount of play it is very hard. We will have the rest of the bunkers done by Tuesday. The heat and humidity is really pushing the limits of our plant protections. some of the fairways and tees got hit very hard with dollar spot and a little brown patch over the last few days. I did make an fungicide application to stop the spread of the disease. the rest of the course will have to resprayed to control the dollar spot this week This year is really pushing the limits of the fungicides. I am loosing about a week of protections with every application. This week it looks like the humidity will be lower and this should help.
We are going to start working on spiking the fairways this upcoming week. I have not been able to do this this year and I feel we really need to get some air into the rootzone. I am sure you have seen some of the low lying areas looking pretty stressed in the last few days. With the amount of rain the soil is so saturated the turf can not handle this condition. I will also topdress the greens along with a light verticutting. The hot humid weather has really made the greens soft and puffy. We need to stasrt addressing this as soon as possible. Also, I thought I was controlling the moss pretty well but i am starting to see it come back. I sprayed a product once again to help stop the growth of the moss hopefully this will help.
Overall I think we are fortunate to have a great drainage system here at Hawks. Even with all these heavy rains the golf course is very playable almost right away. There are many course around our area that this weather is really impacted them in a lot of negative ways. Like I have said I am dreading the year in review in our winter conferences.
I hope to see you soon and also look forward to some great weather
Neil