Another great week behind us and very good course conditions. We managed to get everything very firm over the last 2 weeks and have been happy with the greens speed. I hope that you have had an opportunity to get out and play some golf.
This is the time of the year that I like to make a slow transition to working on projects and encouraging rooting of the turf. Starting tomorrow we will slightly raise the heights of cut on all greens and fairways. we will not mow the greens every day but favor rolling a little more to maintain good firmness and speed. The height of the greens right now is .095 of an inch and that is way too short for winter. I will slowly raise the greens height to .115 and that is were we will be for winter. You may have noticed that we started to work on removing the rough grass around the oak on 2 and have replaced about half to fairway. I already like the change. There are no 'big' projects planned for this fall, but I would like to work on leveling sprinkler heads around the greens, adding a few sprinklers to the front of a few greens to allow for better coverage. I would also like to work on leveling the drains in the fairways. especsially around the greens. Over the years with our topdressing program we are actually raising the surface but the irrigation heads and drains remain in the same spot the only way to fix this problem is physically digging and raising.
The rain we are getting today is really good timing. We are dry and this good soaking should be enough to charge the system back up.